Vitamin C "Dupes"

If you’re unfamiliar with the term “Vitamin C Dupe”, it’s a category of ascorbic acid serums that sprouted from the painful price point of the original ascorbic acid serum, Skinceuticals CE Ferulic (and their conveniently expired patent). As a result, a whole new category of ascorbic acid serums popped up on the market and these products come in all sorts of packaging, price points, and ascorbic acid percentages. For a while, we were holding out on looking at this category because it felt messy. Let’s just say, we knew how much of a challenge it can be to formulate and bottle this formula correctly that we just couldn’t speak well to whether or not these dupe brands were truly a good 1:1 replacement with the original. So we decided to put a few of these formulas to the test to see if there were any tips we could provide in sussing out and finding the “better” dupe.