“The Hype around Dupes: Lidl’s Cien Cellular Beauty Line Compared to La Prairie and Other Expensive Brands”

Especially for Mother’s Day, Lidl responded eagerly to the hype with its cosmetics line. The beauty line Cien Cellular, which is compared to the few hundred euros more expensive brand La Prairie, has been sold at a discount since last week.

The day cream, night cream, eye mousse and serum would be a victim of La Prairie. According to a Lidl spokesperson, it contains ‘similar ingredients to, among other things, the most expensive day cream in the world’.

The special Mother’s Day gift box (day and night cream) cost 6 euros. La Praire’s day cream, with which Lidl’s creams are compared, costs 470 euros.

On TikTok they firmly believe in it, as can be seen in the video below:

Dupes from other brands are also popular on social media. So is beauty influencer Vera Camilla big fan of a L’Oréal Paris lipstick, a dupe of Charlotte Tilbury’s Pillow Talk lipstick. Or think of the setting spray (which makes your make-up last longer) from the elf brand that is a dupe would be from Charlotte Tilbury. And then we have the Hema lipstick is compared to a lip gloss from Dior.

Is the hype right?

It almost seems too good to be true, but is the hype right? According to Catharina Meijer, who works as a cosmetic doctor at her SKIN clinic in Groningen and who has also developed her own skin care line C-ME skincare, good ingredients are by definition expensive. “If you want ingredients that improve your skin and keep it young, you pay for it. Good skincare products make your skin firmer, make pigment spots and pimples disappear and prevent skin aging,” she says.

However, that does not mean that more expensive brands, such as La Prairie, Dior and Charlotte Tilbury, always use those ingredients. On the contrary: “Most cosmetic products aim to keep your skin soft, but also make your skin lazier. That is exactly what the average man and woman wants, for their skin to remain soft. But as you get older, you have to putting that skin to work.”

Purely for the brand

According to Meijer, who has twenty years of experience, some expensive brands are not that good at all. “You’re paying purely for the brand,” she says. Then you would say: buy your creams and make-up at Lidl or Hema. Yet that is not the case either. “If you want visible skin improvement, you can’t do that with Lidl, but also not with La Prairie.”

If you want to know more about the sense and nonsense of skin care, watch the video below:

The cosmetic doctor says that the price of a beauty product consists of the purchase of active ingredients and packaging. “When I look at my most active ingredients in my most expensive bottles, they often don’t exceed 200 euros.” In addition, the ingredients only remain active if they are in good packaging. “They have to be airtight and light-tight.”

For people with a small budget

Beauty influencer Vera Camilla posts countless videos about makeup on her TikTok page. She is a fan of dupes – a derivative of duplicates. “It offers a solution for people with a small wallet who also want to try popular products.”

Yet she is also critical, because very often a dupe is not really a dupe. “Sometimes it comes close, but it’s not exactly what you want. That makes sense, because it’s often complicated to make such a product. But I often keep trying products until I find exactly the right one. ”

Like, for example, with the aforementioned lipstick from L’Oréal Paris:

By Beautylab, one of the most popular beauty blogs in the Netherlands, is said, for example that Lidl’s day cream is not a victim of the La Prairie day cream that costs 470 euros, but of the cream that costs 220 euros.

Vera Camilla likes to look for products that look like expensive products, but cost half as much. And for those on a budget, she says, “a dupe as a gift for Mother’s Day was a super fun and good alternative.”

But she also does not want to undercut the expensive products. “Certain products always have to be made before a dupe can appear. So it cannot arise without expensive brands daring to try something.”

Hype van dupes

Cosmetic doctor Meijer believes that there are very few skin care products on the market that are really good. It’s the reason she set up her own line so she could influence the ingredients. Fruit acids, salicylic acid, vitamin c, retinol and antioxidants are examples of this. In the case of vitamin c, the packaging is also very important. “In most creams, that ingredient doesn’t last very long.”

She understands the hype around dupes, but also regrets it. Because, she says: “If you spend money on your skin, you want it to get better. Anything that isn’t good is pointless.”

Whether you buy a cream from Lidl or from La Prairie, according to Meijer they are both not good. Her advice is therefore mainly: “Try it yourself. If you see a change after a few weeks, such as that your skin has become more even in color or your pores have become finer or your skin has become less vulnerable to pimples and impurities, then you know the answer But if not, then why use it?