Copycat Cosmetics : Many Knockoffs Look and Smell Like the Real Thing
Are you one of those cosmetics collectors who’d test every new invention on the market--if only you could afford to? You have a better chance than ever now that some cosmetic companies are copying a selection of high-brow items for a considerably lower price.
The copycat concept isn’t entirely new. Fragrances promising, “If you like Giorgio, you’ll love Primo,” have been in stores for decades. But lately, there are a lot more of them.
Some products are merely packaged to resemble higher quality items. Others actually duplicate the ingredient lists, marketing strategies, scents and textures of higher priced lines.
Revlon’s Micro Gems face powder pellets ($7.95) are marble-like and ready to be crushed and applied with a brush. They are nearly identical in appearance to Guerlain’s Les Meteorites ($37.50) circular pellets, though they vary in color.
Maybelline’s lipstick ($4.25) is encased in a square-edge black container that looks a lot like Chanel’s Rouge a Levres ($18.50), but without the interlocking C s. Cover Girl Pro Colors eye shadow ($2.25) features a quilted surface like Chanel’s Ombre Couture shadow singles ($25).
One of the most prolific knock-off artists is Russ Kalvin, whose manufacturing facility in Saugus churns out versions of name-brand hair products at a lower cost--in some cases by as much as half off--than the originals he reinterprets. For instance, two eight-ounce bottles of Russ Kalvin’s Generic Brand of Nexxus Therappe are $3 at Drug Emporium, while a single eight-ounce bottle of the real McCoy is $4.50 at Supercuts salons.
Carefully worded labeling on the back of the bottle spells out that Kalvin’s company is not affiliated with Mitchell’s. He also offers versions of Matrix, KMS, Sebastian, Tri, Redmond, Aveda and Mastey.
“We do not try to pawn off our products to be 100% accurate, like they are the real thing,” says Kalvin.
Product scent is the top priority in reproducing anything, he says; competitors and beauty salon owners say it may be the only real similarity,
Though Kalvin’s in-house chemists analyze the formulas, they must guess at the amount of each ingredient used in the original.
Henri Mastey, founder of Valencia-based Mastey hair products, says competitors have not yet matched his product closely enough to cause him to worry.
“Read the ingredients on both and they are practically the same, but all they do is make them look and smell like ours, not perform like it. My customers are more sophisticated. They know if they go after the knockoff, they can’t be assured of the quality.”
William Lauder, vice president of Origins Natural Resources, an herbal-based cosmetics line owned by Estee Lauder, views the knockoffs differently.
“Sure, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery,” he says. “But there should be enough creativity and originality for companies to come up with good ideas of their own.”
