“Duping is not a dirty word,” says MCoBeauty’s chief marketing officer of North America, Meridith Rojas.
A two-day pop-up takeover Saturday and Sunday in Manhattan’s SoHo turned into a full-on beauty block party, drawing more than 4,000 fans who wrapped around several city blocks for a chance to grab over 35,000 free MCoBeauty products — handed out in bags that looked nearly identical to Sephora‘s. In fact the whole experience was designed to rip off the cosmetics giant’s unmistakable branding. Inside, visitors spun prize wheels, sipped free hot chocolate, and lined up for a meet-and-greet with 15-year-old TikTok star Embreigh Courtlyn.
According to the influencer, some fans even went to extremes to attend. “Somebody came here last night at 5 p.m. and slept in their car outside, and some girl told me she flew from London as well,” Courtlyn tells The Hollywood Reporter. But supporting MCoBeauty felt important, she adds, “because a lot of makeup brands like to put the idea that you need to pay so much money to have that good base and stuff, but you don’t.”
Founded in 2016 by Australian entrepreneur Shelley Sullivan, MCoBeauty has rapidly expanded beyond its home country, landing at major U.S. retailers including Target and Kroger. Its products have also taken over social media as the company has leaned directly into duping culture rather than distancing itself from it.
Far from dissembling about its intention to rip off better known brands, MCoBeauty has embraced the idea of offering affordable, lower-priced alternatives to high-end luxury items — a strategy that aligns with its tagline, “Luxury for Everyone.” Much of the brand’s inspiration has been widely assumed by consumers to come from products sold at retailers like Sephora, with MCoBeauty creating versions of favorites from brands such as Charlotte Tilbury, Estée Lauder and Drunk Elephant.
“When I started at this company, I think ‘dupe’ was still a lingering, dirty word on social [media]. People would sound it out, and they would write ‘d-o-o-p,’” Rojas, who joined the brand in 2024, tells THR. “It was almost like, ‘You don’t say the D-word.’ And I feel like taking the shame out of it and actually embracing it, and making it about people who’ve felt left out by luxury — blurring the line between prestige and mass — and saying you can actually get luxury at a price you can afford.”
While MCoBeauty’s packaging often mimics that of well-known prestige brands, Rojas explains that the products are formulated to perform at the same level, but at a much lower costs that the high luxury versions on the market. For example, Charlotte Tilbury’s Airbrush Flawless Finish Powder, which sells for $49, compared to MCoBeauty’s Miracle Flawless Pressed Powder at $9.99.
The company won’t, however, share information about their efforts to replicate the precise chemistry of the cosmetics they copy. “We don’t reveal all of our process because it is a bit of a cave of secrets,” Rojas says. “Ingredients are important, and we stand by how good it looks as much as how good it works. If it was just something that resembled prestige but didn’t perform like the prestige, we wouldn’t be delivering on our promise.”
Rojas also notes that many consumers are steering away from paying top dollar from luxury brands. “There’s no mystery around luxury and how you’re buying a premium brand name. And so the markups in luxury are often astronomical,” she says. She compares the shift in beauty to fashion’s long-established dupe culture — referencing companies like Zara, H&M and Quince that sell items closely resembling luxury products at a cheaper price. “You don’t want to pay a premium, because you know you don’t have to anymore.”
Fashion products have long been a target for counterfeiters, and some beauty dupes are likewise illegal — the equivalent of knock-off designer handbag laid out on a rug on the sidewalks of NYC’s Fifth Avenue. (A key distinction is whether the replica includes the luxury brand’s logo or name, which is forbidden, or just the look, which is not.) But beauty dupes have generally been more discreet. “In beauty it seemed way more hush hush,” Rojas explains. “Brands would be inspired by other brands, but it’s not always super obvious. And we just realized, let’s go for it. Let’s do a 360 experience, let’s be unapologetic. It’s not because we don’t have integrity — it’s a Robin Hood mentality. It’s about the consumer who has been priced out of luxury beauty.”
They take a similarly cheeky approach to marketing. Last year, when the company’s head of social media, Gabe Gomez, discovered a Timothée Chalamet lookalike contest was taking place at Washington Square Park in New York City, the MCoBeauty leaned into the stunt, and found someone to send to pass out their products. “Gomez is like, ‘I want to send our own Timothée dupe and just hijack the event.’ And we’re like, ‘Yeah, let’s do it.’ He found somebody from Wisconsin who had never been on a plane before, flew him out, and this dupe of Timothée showed up with an MCo bag, handed out contour sticks — and next thing you know, the real Timothée Chalamet was there and it went completely viral,” Rojas says. “At the end of the day, a lookalike is a dupe — a human dupe.”
MCoBeauty campaign
Gabe Gomez
Influencers are another major part of MCoBeauty’s strategy, and an avenue they’ve also leaned into rather than having traditional celebrities promote the company. The brand has partnered with creators including Bethenny Frankel, Campbell Puckett (aka “Pookie” on TikTok), and castmembers from The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, which featured MCoBeauty in season three, episode four. Rojas says this approach reflects how consumers are currently discovering beauty products.
“Borrowing community is the new ad spend,” she says. “No one’s flipping through magazines or watching TV the same way — their entertainment is in the scroll. We’ve worked with 8,000 creators since we launched in the U.S. They can tell the story of the brand better than an actor reading a script. We want to find a way to enter the chat, not just slap our logo on someone’s page.”