Tennessee Woman Says She Found The Best Charlotte Tilbury Dupes: ‘We’re Not Being Excluded Any Longer’

The beauty industry is booming, and consumers have more options than ever when it comes to makeup products. Not everyone can afford designer makeup, and content creator Nina Pool (@ninaghoulina) told TikTok that she may have found the perfect dupes for two Charlotte Tilbury products.

“She has a very arrogant air about her,” Pool said of the London makeup mogul, Charlotte Tilbury. The founder has been a fierce critic of products that dupe those in her makeup line.

“When you dupe, you dupe the consumer,” Tilbury said in a recent BBC interview.

Pool said that by digging information up, she was able to find which companies manufacture for Charlotte Tilbury. This is because in the United States, bills of lading are public information in the United States. Essentially, people who want to look up information about a package shipped in the United States can do so.

Because of her sleuthing, Pool was able to find which supplier Tilbury allegedly uses for their lip liner pencils, specifically the Lip Cheat.

Pool traced two nearly-identical Charlotte Tilbury dupes

“If you didn’t know this, a manufacturer called Schwan is one of the leading manufacturers for lip liners,” Pool said. She proceeded to show proof that Schwan Cosmetics Germany GMBH is responsible for producing Lip Cheat.

Then, she showed another lip liner brand from another company. Pool challenged viewers to guess which brand is which. All she did was cover their labels by hand, but even their packaging seemed similar.

But Pool said that the similarities go beyond packaging.

“These lip liners are from Charlotte Tilbury and a brand called Kiko Milano. They are from Italy, and they started from 1997. Their lip pencils are also manufactured by Schwan, the leading manufacturer of lip pencils,” Pool alleged.

The content creator then pulled out the Velvet Lipstick line by Kiko Milano. She put them side by side with the Charlotte Tilbury Matte Revolution Lipstick collection, and the packaging also looked similar.

Pool swatched both the products on her hand to prove they have roughly the same formula. On her hand, they gave off the same effect.

Deinfluencing and making informed decisions

“So, what I can gather from all this information is that they’re tweaking these products just a little bit and then tagging on the extra $30 or $40 and telling you that you are the one being duped if you want to purchase anything that is similar to their product,” Pool accused. This wouldn’t be the first time the content creator has advocated for dupe makeup products. Pool is known on social media for promoting and testing beauty brands that give a similar feel to their high-end counterparts.

“They are also claiming that they’re innovative—that they’re behind all of the science, and that’s what really bothers me. Because there are real cosmetic chemists that work for these manufacturers that are bright, talented people. But people like Charlotte Tilbury state that they are, in fact, the ones that are revolutionary,” she continued.

Pool clarified that she was not picking on people who had a preference for what she called “prestige” makeup products. Rather, she was addressing the marketing tactic behind the branding—of making some consumers feel “less than” for choosing dupe products.

“We are not being excluded any longer because of brands like Kiko Milano,” Pool said.

(featured images: Nina Pool)

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