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Rachael Parnell

After discovering Rachael Parnell heard a discounter was offering a fresh beauty line that appeared similar to items from luxury brand Augustinus Bader, she was "extremely excited".

Rachael hurried to her nearest store to pick up the supermarket face cream for £8.49 for 50ml - a fraction of the £240 cost of the high-end 50ml item.

Its streamlined blue tube and gold cap of the two items look strikingly similar. And though Rachael has never tried the premium cream, she says she's pleased by the dupe so far.

She has been using beauty alternatives from mainstream retailers and grocery stores for a long time, and she's not alone.

More than a 25% of UK shoppers say they've bought a beauty or cosmetic dupe. This jumps to 44% among millennials and Gen Z, according to a recent survey.

Alternatives are beauty items that copy well-known labels and present cost-effective substitutes to luxury products. These products typically have similar names and packaging, but in some cases the ingredients can differ significantly.

Victoria Woollaston

'Expensive Isn't Always Better'

Beauty professionals argue many dupes to luxury labels are good standard and assist make skincare less expensive.

"It is not true that higher-priced is necessarily superior," says dermatology expert a doctor. "Not every affordable skincare brand is bad - and not all high-end skincare product is the best."

"A number of [dupes] are absolutely impressive," adds Scott McGlynn, who runs a program with celebrities.

Numerous of the products based on high-end labels "sell out so fast, it's just unbelievable," he observes.

Scott McGlynn

Skin specialist another professional argues alternatives are suitable to use for "fundamental products" like moisturisers and cleansers.

"Dupes will serve a purpose," he explains. "These items will perform the essentials to a satisfactory degree."

A consultant dermatologist, suggests you can spend less when searching for simple-formula products like hyaluronic acid, niacinamide and a moisturizing ingredient.

"If you're buying a single-ingredient product then you're likely going to be alright in using a lookalike or something which is quite low cost because there's minimal that can be problematic," she explains.

'Do Not Be Sold by the Packaging'

But the experts also advise consumers do their research and say that more expensive items are sometimes worthy of the additional cost.

With high-end skincare, you're not just covering the label and promotion - at times the increased cost also comes from the components and their grade, the strength of the key component, the science utilized to develop the item, and tests into the item's performance, she notes.

Beauty expert another professional suggests it's valuable questioning how certain alternatives can be offered so inexpensively.

Sometimes, she says they may have bulking agents that lack as significant positive effects for the skin, or the materials might not be as carefully selected.

"One major question mark is 'How is it so low-priced?'" she says.

Podcast host McGlynn says sometimes he's bought skincare items that appear comparable to a well-known label but the product itself has "no resemblance to the original".

"Do not be convinced by the outer appearance," he warned.

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For advanced products or ones with ingredients that can irritate the skin if they're not made accurately, such as retinoids or vitamin C serums, the specialist recommends using medical-grade brands.

The expert says these will likely have been subjected to expensive studies to evaluate how successful they are.

Skincare items are required to be evaluated before they can be available in the UK, says skin doctor another professional.

If the label advertises about the effectiveness of the item, it must have evidence to back it up, "however the brand does not necessarily have to do the testing" and can instead use studies completed by other brands, she says.

Examine the Label of the Bottle

Is there any ingredients that could suggest a product is low-quality?

Components on the list of the tube are ordered by amount. "Ingredients to avoid that you should look out for… is your mineral oil, your sodium lauryl sulfate, fragrance, benzel peroxide" being {high up