Rose Mora-Laurie

And it might take you a couple clicks from the product page on a place like Amazon or Walmart.

But I put in the addresses for all of these, and I saw places that certainly don't inspire confidence or give you the sense that this is an above-board or a typically run business.

These were more someone doing business quite possibly out of their garage or apartment.

So we had everything shipped to our office.

To look at it as a layperson, I was like, oh, no, I messed up.

This was supposed to be a story about buying counterfeit products.

And these all look pretty legit to me, even looking at them side by side.

But then we put all that together in one package and sent it to our cosmetic chemist.

She ran a series of tests to really look at not just the packaging, but obviously the product inside.

and everything turned out fishy.

And by fishy, I mean almost certainly counterfeit, and at best, other things that felt like red flags, like it kind of looked used.

You look up the lock code, and this product is maybe older than you would want a product to be, and it being sort of past its prime age-wise certainly is not ideal.

Yes.

I tell folks, whether they're internet commenters, whether they're actual friends of mine, please start with shopping.

brick and mortar, in-person, first-party retail.

That means department stores, Sephora, and then like Target.

The other thing that I would feel just as good pointing someone towards is the brand's own website.

If your next option is to do a big e-retailer, a big platform like Amazon or Walmart, make sure that you are getting product through an authorized partnership between Amazon and the brand.

And I cannot tell anyone in good conscience, shop third party.

Certainly, again, not for anything that you're putting in or on your body.