Is it OK that Western brands copy Korean beauty? Welcome to Klog Chat, a series where we ask you to tell us how you do skin care and beauty: Here we’re wondering: What do you think when American and Western brands copy Korean beauty concepts and ideas in their products? Let us know.
Before we get down in the comments section, we want to bring up what prompted us to ask you all this question this week. One of our all-time favorite and super talented Korean nail artists, Park Eun Kyung, AKA Nail Unistella, found herself in a truly unfortunate situation this week with the massive American nail company Sally Hansen.
Here’s the shortened version of the story: Park is the creator of all those Korean nail art trends you’ve become obsessed with. We’re talking about glass nails, tattoo nails, and wire nails (among so many other trendy designs). According to a Racked report, Sally Hansen caught wind of how popular she is and approached her in 2016 for a collaboration of sorts. Park responded back to the company’s email saying she wanted to discuss the idea more and received word from Sally Hansen that they would get back to her.
Well, they never did. Instead they ghosted her and just now launched a collection of “K-Design” nail stickers that look pretty similar to Park’s designs. Park decided to reach out to Sally Hansen herself and ask them about the designs. According to Park, this was the company’s response: “The designs we launched as part of this collection are not your designs. As I’m sure you are aware, basic shapes such as hearts, lips and wavy lines, or patterns resembling broken glass, are not ownable.”
Park then posted a pretty passionate statement on Instagram expressing her disappointment over Sally Hansen’s designs. “What I do have is my integrity as an artist and the knowledge that I am the originator of these designs,” writes Park. “You’ve broken my heart but you will not break my spirit.”
While this story has many nuances, it can’t help but remind us of the fact that lots of American and Western companies are launching products directly “inspired” by K-beauty. Products that immediately come to mind are Benefit’s two-toned lipsticks that seem like a direct copy of Laniege’s popular lipsticks and Lancome launching cushion compacts. We see it happening with a lot of Korean mask innovations, as well. Also, many of the Western brands that create Korean beauty-inspired products sell them at a higher price point than Korean products.
This is a very complicated topic with the possibility of both acceptable and unacceptable instances.