As a beauty enthusiast, I must have seen thousands of Tiktoks or YouTube videos talking about numerous dupes for popular, often more expensive products. We grew up in a society wherein most of the time expensive means better but with the current advancements in the beauty industry this has started to change as more and more products turn out to perform comparably well or even at par with popular brands.

Here are a few much-loved beauty products and their corresponding dupes – tried and tested by yours truly.

I’ve been an avid fan and collector of liquid blushes since NARS released their version in 2017. I’ve tried a bunch of options from Glossier, Inglot, and Peri Pera, but I always come back to NARS for its longevity and luxe feel. Imagine my surprise to find ads of Nee Cara Liquid Blush (P260 for 15g, at Shopee) that look so much like the NARS blushes, down to the shade range. Now imagine the electric charge in the air when my editor proposed to compare the two, plus the liquid blushes from O.TWO.O (P300 for 15g at Shopee), a Chinese company that also sells liquid blushes in the same packaging and shade range! And so I tested the three formulas to investigate how similar they are and why the Nee Cara and O.TWO.O blushes look the same.