The Sliced Saga: Hydrogel Eye Patch-Gate, Explained
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2 min
Four beauty brands, one suspiciously similar skincare contraption, and a K-beauty plot twist nobody saw coming.
Ariana, whaddareyoudoinhere???! Something funny has been floating in the air of the beauty world… and no, it’s not a fly, it’s not a virus, it's a bunch of launches with suspiciously similar products launching at suspiciously similar times.
When a brand launches a brightening sorbet cream, and another follows suit it usually flies under the radar, but it’s hard to be inconspicuous when the product looks like a peculiar cylinder that dispenses eye patches.
Coincidence? I think not. There are several brands releasing their own cylindrical eye patch dispenser at the same time.
It’s a little messy, and strikingly similar to that triple-Spiderman situation where everyone's pointing fingers at the other.
Let’s break it down:
A Slice of Drama
(POV You’re All Wearing The Same Dress…)
Ironically, Fenty acknowledged the unintentional matching moment with a parody of the famous meme - but we’ll get to that soon. On the 17th of September, Fenty teased its “first of its kind” Dew N Plump Eye Patches.
A day later on the 18th September, Glow Recipe surprised the internet with their Exopeptide Caffeine Eye Masks. And just a few hours later, Huda Beauty leaked their Undereye Jelly Patches.
HELLO??
It’s 2021 with deja vu by Olivia Rodrigo trending the world’s biggest charts all over again because why is everything looking so familiar?? Or should we say… similar.
As all things go, the internet caught on QUICK. Word spread like wildfire, Twitter had a field day, and all the self-proclaimed PI’s came out to play with one question - how the flip did this happen?!
The Twist of A Lifetime
(It’s Giving The Other Woman)
As if things couldn’t get any crazier, K-beauty brand Wonder Bath walks through the door (aka. the OG woman).
Wonder Bath launched their Slice Serum back in July on the down low, with the exact same twist-and-slice format… all of a sudden, the whole situation starts to unfold like a scene from a romcom movie.
Fenty (Cameron Diaz) discovers her boyfriend is married to Wonder Bath (Leslie Mann) and later discovers other mistresses Glow Recipe and Huda Beauty (Kate Upton), then bond over being deceived by the same man.
Same plot, different characters. But who’s actually to blame for all of this? I hear you - you’ve got fingers and want to know where to point them.
The Other Woman (2014)
So, Who’s To Blame?
(The Plot Thickens)
Introducing the boyfriend: the manufacturer.
It’s important to note that beauty brands don’t necessarily invent every piece of packaging from scratch - even when working with specialist manufacturers to develop mechanisms and components, those can be used by others if there's no patent or exclusivity.
I'll admit, the plot gets a little less The Other Woman and a lot more business logistics.
Fenty didn’t copy Glow Recipe, Huda didn’t steal from Wonder Bath, and Glow Recipe wasn’t secretly spying on Huda; they were probably just shopping from the same catalog.
Maybe it's not a case of which brand did what first, but rather, one big beauty industry miscommunication where everyone was sold on a dollar and a dream, only to rock up to the red carpet in the same dress as everyone else.
And so, the great mystery of the sliced eye patch comes to a close.
Was there copying? Not really. Was there deception? Maybe. Was everyone shopping from the same packaging catalogue? Quite possibly. Was it really entertaining? Absolutely.
If there's anything we can stand ten toes down on till I die is that Fenty has absolutely owned the situation from a PR perspective, and the other brands have followed suit.
Instead of getting defensive or turning it into a competition, they leaned into the joke, rolled on the floor with us, and got the beauty brands in on it too! When everyone looks the same, personality always wins.
When life hands you lemons… slice it, Beauties x
