We are living in a time where anything can be replicated and nothing is precious about a product other than what you stand for when you’re wearing a label,” rang the voice through my phone screen; a voice belonging to Ellie Chen, founder of L.A.-based ethical fashion label Oddli. Chen had just posted a TikTok video to thousands of her followers, letting them know that her small business had been copied by a seller on Amazon, using the platform to sell near-exact replicas of her clothing – for much, much cheaper prices. Chen is just one in a long line of designers who have had their craft and livelihoods upended by the raging popularity of online ‘dupe culture’ (‘dupe’ being short for ‘duplicate’). Victims range from small designers like NYC-based Mirror Palais and Lirika Matoshi, to luxury fashion houses like Bottega Veneta and Miu Miu. Unlike counterfeits, which carry unauthorised logos or trademarks, dupes created and sold as cheaper alternatives to premium or luxury consumer products are in the business of mimicry.

It’s a phenomenon that has taken hold of the internet over the last few years like an infection, with the hashtag #dupe garnering more than three billion views on TikTok by the end of last year, and Google searches for the word doubling since 2022. It’s perhaps a symptom of the cost-of-living crisis; maybe a byproduct of the impossible speed and finances needed to keep up with an ever-accelerating trend cycle. With Gen Z and social media users spearheading the fad, it’s easy to see why these audiences might be the most vulnerable to the charms of dupes. However, despite their recent surge in popularity, dupes, as a concept, are not new. For as long as there have been expensive things to buy, there have been knock-offs sold at more savoury prices. We’ve known about – maybe even bought from – fast fashion brands like Zara, ASOS, H&M or Shein for years (the latter projecting their internal revenue for 2023 at a staggering $33 billion). But while these mega-corporations were always able to push inexpensive knockoffs out onto the market, they are now doing it in record time, in record numbers, and they still face… almost no consequences at all. Legally, dupes do not violate intellectual property laws simply because they do not claim to be the original product. There are those who will argue that the case against dupe culture is “classist”, that the ethics of shopping designer or shopping sustainably are inherently cost ineffective for the average consumer. But where does accessibility end and accountability begin? Especially in a day-in-age where #SheinHauls are trending online, and, according to the Australian Fashion Council, more than 200,000 tonnes of textile waste are hitting Australian landfills every year?

If we look beyond even just the deliberate attempts at mimicry in fashion, and at the epidemic of idea-repurposing at large in creative fields, a much more interesting (some might say demoralising) picture begins to form. A picture that begs questions about where we draw lines in the sand, ethically and legally. When pop singer-songwriter Olivia Rodrigo dropped her debut record Sour in May of 2021, it was an instant hit. She topped charts, broke records and her album opener Brutal, was one of the tracks that got her there. It wasn’t long after the release of her album, however, that fans and critics were quick to spot similarities in the song’s opening riff to another: 2005’s Voodoo Child by Rogue Traders. Even more astute listeners recalled that the riff from Voodoo Child was actually lifted from Elvis Costello’s 1978 hit Pump It Up. It re-sparked a debate about originality in music that divided fans, Costello himself eventually chiming into the discourse via Twitter to say: “This is fine by me. It’s how rock and roll works. You take the broken pieces of another thrill and make a brand new toy.” He added: “That’s what I did.”

There are plenty of other high-profile copyright cases in the music world from the last few decades too – Led Zeppelin, George Harrison, Queen and David Bowie. In some cases, they were cleared of plagiarism; in others, made to cough up hefty sums of cash. All this to say, in the Venn diagram of inspiration and imitation, we are at a crossroad. How many degrees of difference are needed until a piece of art can be considered an original once again? Is it as simple as a percentage of unique pixels? A few bars of a chorus? The placement of a few buttons? A change in intended meaning or audience? It’s an almost futile argument – particularly as AI enters the chat and we begin to discuss the parameters around its use. Sure, we might not be running out of unique combinations of musical notes or brush strokes on a canvas – but how many of those are even profitable now that artists are feeling increasingly compelled to cater toward a public hive mind with an ever-shrinking, homogenised sense of taste? It feels like popular culture these days has become a petri dish for remixes, sequels, spin-offs, adaptations or reboots. We spend our time listening to rappers, singers and DJs – like Jack Harlow, Ariana Grande and Nicki Minaj – who rip bars from Y2K hits and top charts with them; not just because it’s easy for them to do, but because listeners are doubling down to hear them. Hollywood is producing more film reboots, adaptations and sequels than ever. Runway shows are becoming increasingly caught up in internet trend cycles – from ‘quiet luxury’ to ‘coquette’.

These days, it feels as if we are trained to want more of what we already know; that the algorithms we’ve been spending hours of each day training to understand us on platforms like TikTok and Instagram are, in fact, limiting our ability to recognise real originality. Perhaps we are doomed to an existence of a stunted, gentrified taste for the same familiar jingles, and flaying the dead horse of pop culture franchises like Star Wars, Harry Potter, Lord Of The Rings – even Mean Girls. Needless to say, whether ideas are taken purposefully, or just referenced heavily, it’s clear that there is really only one real culprit to blame – us. Our obsession with immediacy and trend cycles and algorithm-driven tastes is something to detach ourselves from if we want to breed originality. It removes temptation for artists and institutions to profit from bunny hopping on already commercially successful ideas, or for corporations to mass-produce ‘dupes’ in the pursuit of our shallow and near-sighted approach to fashion, beauty and more. The real thing might be indecipherable to the naked eye – but, as Chen herself so aptly put it, when everything can be replicated, nothing is precious anymore except what you stand for when you give creative output your attention or money. It leaves imitation, I think, as a pretty insincere form of flattery.