No, this is not a post about the ongoing gourmand obsession. It’s something altogether more existential, if you will.
As I was scrolling through a website offering pages upon pages of rip-offs / clones / dupes (never mind doom scrolling, this is ’fume scrolling), it occurred to me that perhaps we’ll get to the stage where there will rip-offs of rip-offs.
So picture the scene: we went from the hugely popular Maison Francis Kurkdjian Baccarat Rouge 540 to probably its most well-known rip-off, Fragrance World Barrakat Rouge 540.
Is it a step too far to imagine a clone of the latter? Let’s call it Barrakesh Rouge 540. That iteration, through the power of social media, becomes so popular, it leads to another clone. See where I’m going with this?
Of course, each clone becomes further removed from the original, so much so that it disappears into the mists of memory. Almost like a pop song that gets covered so regularly, it’s easy to forget who did the original.
Is this scenario far-fetched? Initially, I thought so. But as my scrolling, er, research on rip-offs continued and I come across more renditions of Maison Francis Kurkdjian Baccarat 540, maybe not.
If you want to know why, for example, in the UK, perfume manufacturers can trademark their brand names, labels and bottle shapes, but not the scent of an original fragrance, read this informative piece from The Guardian.
*Disclaimer: While I don’t use AI in any of my other fragrance images, I found Microsoft’s Copilot very useful in helping to create some of these graphics with one of my OG images.