Dupes!

By Victoria Nergaard

As a poor fashion professional who touts sustainability as one of my greatest industry concerns, I have to admit my guilty pleasure is particularly shameful. But admittance is the first step towards recovery, right? It is with my most profound regret that I reveal that my guilty pleasure is runway dupes. 

Now what exactly is a runway dupe? Not quite a knockoff, but certainly not an original, a dupe is a product usually made by fast fashion brands that captures the essence of trendy designer’s pieces but does not seek to copy them exactly. Dupes are for the fashion girls like me who don’t come from a lot of resources to look chic, as these pieces allow us to look somewhat fresh off the runway to the untrained eye, but at an affordable price. Now you may be thinking, But is that not the democratization of fashion? Is this accessibility not a good thing? I will tell you now dear reader, that as much as access tears down the wall of the exclusive fashion world, it is not.

First and foremost, dupes are pretty much always made by wasteful fashion brands like the infamous Zara, as they’re totally and completely profit driven. Dupes exist because affordable brands view an opportunity in the market where they can sell designer-inspired pieces to a clientele who desperately wants to be fashionable but can’t afford a high fashion price-point. On top of that, dupes also undercut the creativity of fashion as they’re completely unintentional in design, aside from selling customers the idea of the runway. 

Unlike incredibly cool small-scale designers that are arguably far more fashionable than runway dupe producers, these brands just repeat styles that already exist in pursuit of profit. In the same vein, dupes also reinforce the idea that couture is the pinnacle of fashion, as opposed to independent, small-scale brands, and upholds the fashion hierarchy by telling us that you are only chic if you can recreate the designer’s look within your means. At the end of the day, dupes are here to make us feel like we have to all look the same to be “fashion”. So, after all this criticism, why is it that dupes are my guilty pleasure? I guess they appeal to my desire to fit in with the upper echelon in the fashion industry, to dress like my peers.

Plus, sometimes I just like a style that’s way out of my price range. In fact, none of my dupes are even couture knockoffs, but that really doesn’t atone for my sins. At the end of the day I’m guilty of dupes. Sure, one of us is going to have to change, but it should probably be both - me, and my fashion buying habits.