Beauty Founders Have a Lot to Say About the Eye Patch Debate
Experts say identical packaging is far more nuanced than the internet might think.
Every once in a while, a single moment completely reshapes conversation in the beauty community. After Fenty Skin, Huda Beauty and Glow Recipe discovered they were all set to release eerily similar self-slicing eye patches, the internet was quick to question which came first. But, experts tell Hypebae that being first to market doesn’t always mean being first to develop, which makes the question of who really came first practically impossible to answer.
In an overcrowded category that moves incredibly fast and thrives on individuality, identical packaging will undoubtedly raise brows among beauty fans. Once the debate erupted online, Huda Kattan of Huda Beauty commented, “I think it’s pretty obvious that we all got screwed over by the same packaging supplier. Formulas are different, but we were lied to on the exclusivity with the packaging supplier, pretty crazy.”
Back in July, K-beauty brand Wonder Bath debuted its Slice Serum Eye Patches, which featured the same self-slicing mechanism that the trio of brands would later tease. However, with claims of plagiarism rife in the beauty world, founders note that product development is rarely as straightforward as consumers assume. “One of the biggest misconceptions consumers have about product development is that being first to market means you were first to develop. It doesn’t. Products can be in development for [up to] 24 months before a consumer ever sees them, and multiple brands can be developing around the same emerging technology simultaneously,” Allyse Cirillo, founder and CEO of SAINT JŌ says.
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For this very reason, Cirillo believes it would be a major oversimplification to assume Wonder Bath is the originator of the packaging solely because the brand released it first. As consumers, we’re often unaware of everything that goes on behind the scenes, so many beauty fans resort to filling the gaps with their own interpretations. “When three recognizable brands appear with nearly identical packaging within days of each other, the immediate assumption on social media is naturally going to be, ‘Who copied whom?’ The reality of product development can be much less dramatic,” Cirillo adds. “Shared suppliers, stock packaging, overlapping development timelines and emerging manufacturing technologies can all result in brands arriving at similar places independently.”
K-beauty undoubtedly plays a role in the West’s appetite for both makeup and skincare. Because of this, many Instagram commenters began to cite Korean brands as the actual originator of self-slicing packaging. For Kira Piskalova, co-founder of Beyond Facials, it’s a bit more nuanced than that, “Korean packaging manufacturer Samhwa holds patents for rotating and grinding cosmetic containers and is publicly listed as the manufacturer of a closely similar grind-cut hydrogel eye-patch dispenser. That suggests the relevant mechanism existed within a broader Korean packaging ecosystem rather than originating entirely with one beauty brand at launch,” she tells Hypebae.
However, the self-slicing packaging itself may not be as groundbreaking as the online discourse suggests. In reality, much of the debate centers which brand was the first to release the packaging, rather than the innovation of the mechanism itself. “I suspect many consumers will eventually move on, especially if the format becomes more common and products differentiate themselves through formulas, claims and performance. Airless pumps are a useful example: once marketed as a premium experience, they now appear across prestige and mass-market skincare and feel less novel,” Piskalova says.
In our visual-first, social media landscape, gimmicks often garner more attention than the formulas themselves. So while consumers are becoming increasingly sophisticated, the race to get the most clicks is seemingly never-ending. “I would be cautious about assuming that [the self-cutting mechanism] automatically means greater skincare efficacy. That’s an important distinction in beauty right now. Something can be genuinely innovative from a packaging and experience perspective without necessarily being a formulation breakthrough,” Cirillo says.
