A Fake vs Original Kylie Lip Kit, and Why You Rly Shouldn't Buy Fake Makeup

I was killing time in a mall when I spotted stalls selling fake makeup.  "Miss, authentic ba to?" I asked the lady in the first stall. "Hindi po Mam! Galing Korea ito," she smiled at me. I asked the same question in the second stall, "Authentic po lahat Mam!" as the guy showed me a non-existent Kylie palette. It was surprising to say the least as I wasn't in a low rent seedy mall - I was in Glorietta 1, and the bazaar area had not one but two fake makeup stands almost right across each other.

I think this is problematic because of the context. If a not-so-in-the-know prospective buyer saw the cheap, fake makeup from a street vendor, it should be fairly clear that the merchandise is not what it claims to be. But in a mall, there is a blanket of legitimacy that can fool even well-meaning customers who just want a good deal. I hope Glorietta looks into this for the welfare of their customers and retail partners! I saw even fake Etude House, L'Oreal, and Maybelline in the stalls.


Anyway, I bought a few things to test. I got the Kylie Lip Kit in Posie K since I have the original and thought it would be interesting to compare. It was P300 for the set, which sounds pretty attractive considering resellers sell the authentic one for at least P2,000 a pop. I was still scalped though - the next stall was selling the exact same thing for P150! Ugh. I should have canvassed first. People are even telling me they see the fake Kylies selling for as low as P60 in Divisoria.

Here's a quick video to show you how both look like side by side, with swatches!

Some salient points:

  • The boxes only have a few minor differences only in terms of font and print quality. The components (the tubes and pencils) though are almost identical! I even had to place a sticker in my liquid lipstick so I don't mistakenly put the fake one on my lips. I didn't have to do the same for the pencil though because the authentic one has already been sharpened several times.
  • The shade difference is remarkable. The lip liners come in different hues and saturation so they were easy to tell apart. The liquid lipsticks are not at all similar: the original is a mauvey pink while the fake Posie K is a peachy pink.
  • The fake Kylie lip liner seem scentless, but the liquid lipstick has a cloying sharp sweet scent. Like sweet-smelling plastic.
  • The scariest thing though is the formulation. See how the pencil applied with a red streak? It disappeared later on, after some pretty heavy swatching, but it bothered me so much that I decided not to put the fake products on the lips even though that was my original intention. The liquid lipstick is even scarier - it sticks like super glue! If you've ever had super glue accidentally stuck on your skin, the fake Kylie has pretty much the same feel and adhesive strength! It's waterproof and can only be taken off with loads of makeup remover.

We're always on the lookout for a waterproof lipstick we never need to retouch, right, but in this case it's a hard pass for me. The problem is that I don't know what's in the formula and I don't care to find out by testing it on my lips. It could be glue (says Glamour magazine) or gasoline (says Nylon, according to a duped consumer). I thought initially that the fake lippies would just really smell bad and be more uncomfortable than dirt cheap drugstore makeup. The swatches, however, discouraged me immediately (see vid if you haven't).

I hate to preach, but it's important to always put your health and safety first. These fake products look almost like the real thing, but the formula can not be trusted because you literally don't know what's in it. It's like...eating food that's been in your fridge for a while. You don't know if it's ok or moldy or full of maggots, but you still eat it anyway without looking into the bag. Being safe costs almost nothing, while being sorry is quite expensive later on. 

Do you have any experiences with fake makeup? How did it go for you?