Staring at the vast sea of sameness that exists on every drugstore beauty aisle can be daunting. There are eleven different international brands that have at least 20 nail polish colors and ten lipstick colors to choose from – not to mention the various combined eyeshadow palettes, foundation bottles, bronzers, highlighters, and oh my god the pencils…
People like you and me most frequently find ourselves standing in this very drugstore beauty aisle looking for a color that’s so specific that it will match something we saw on someone who paid much more for high-end cosmetic products from a superstar company favored by makeup artists around the world. (Spoiler alert: it’s not Wet’n’Wild.)
Falling in love with an expensive cosmetic is heartbreaking. I remember the first time I saw MAC’s Russian Red – it was a revelation. Discovering the price of one single tube of the most perfect red I’d ever seen was… well, another kind of revelation. I’ll spare you the graphic details of my pouting. Besides – those days are over!
Thanks to the internet, we can now syphon the beauty knowledge directly from the people who devote their lives to it. Makeup artists and aficionados spend years collecting, testing, and comparing makeup and cosmetics, eventually developing an encyclopedic knowledge of products they’ve seen and used. Looking at a drugstore beauty aisle with someone who knows makeup like the back of their perfectly manicured hand is a priceless commodity. Luckily, all you need is instagram.
Follow them now: @DupeThat
@DupeThat’s Instagram feed is chock full of inspiring photos of beautiful women in wonderfully applied makeup (put a pin in that for later…) as well as dozens upon dozens of side-by-side comparisons between high end lipstick and other cosmetic products and their drugstore and affordable beauty counterparts. Yes, beauty dupes. A favorite of broke girls everywhere. With beauty dupes, you can achieve the looks you’ve seen in editorials without spending four meal’s worth of cash on a single lipstick color.
The feed also monitors the #dupethat hashtag, where other Instagram users are encouraged to submit their own dupes for a chance to be featured on the popular feed! (With credit, of course.) You’ll know the original @DupeThat dupes from their unmistakable font style, and they’re frequently the only ones who include prices – much appreciated!
Popular brands used for inexpensive dupes include NYX, Colourpop, Milani and our old favorite…. Wet’n’Wild.
To add some extra icing on your cake, they include miniature reviews in each Instagram post, along with a highly organized list of full reviews on their companion website, DupeThat.com. Each review comes complete with score out of 5.
The feed is mostly full of lipstick beauty dupes, but scatters in some highlighters, pencils and even brushes!
The account is run by two women, K + L, who also run a sister account called @TheLipSwatch. If you’re a fan of seeing oodles of different lipstick colors on the same beautiful bottom-half-of-face over and over – this is for you. Lipstick colors can be so inconsistent from tube to lips, so seeing their color and consistency on a real, life human (with little to no filters!) can be very helpful.