Kim Kardashian’s new skincare line sparks outrage over name issue
The reality star has sparked outrage with the announcement of her latest venture after fans spotted a “gross” issue with its name.
Kim Kardashian is being called out by critics who claim her newly announced skincare brand has a strikingly similar detail to another celebrity beauty line.
The famous mum-of-four unveiled SKKN BY KIM, a line of nine skincare products, on Thursday – explaining she’d designed the range “so that everyone can feel confident in their skin”.
But within hours of the announcement, social media users were claiming the brand was strikingly similar to a Skn by LH, another beauty brand launched by American model Lori Harvey last year.
Streams of comments flooded social media calling out the apparent similarity, according to an exclusive report by Page Six.
Stream more entertainment news live & on demand with Flash. 25+ news channels in 1 place. New to Flash? Try 1 month free. Offer ends 31 October, 2022 >
“Anyone with a fully developed brain and a pair of working eyeballs can clearly see that S-K-N and S-K-K-N is the same,” one Instagram user argued, the publication stated.
“You could be so creative with your kids’ names. Now all of a sudden, you lost creativity? … At this point, it’s pretty much giving copy and paste.”
The same dissenter pointed out that Kardashian, 41, “has a history,” as a Twitter user accused the reality star of “stealing from a black woman for the thousandth time”.
“Why would kim do a line called SKKN when lori harvey has SKN. who’s [sic] bright idea was that?” another user asked.
While another critic asked: “Did Kim Kardashian really name her skincare like SKKN because LoriHarvey already took SKN??”
The reality mega star’s nine-step product line is set to drop on June 21, eight months after the model daughter of Steve Harvey debuted her five-step system.
Unlike her younger sister Kylie Jenner’s namesake skincare line, Kim’s is on the higher end of the scale, with fans wanting to buy the entire collection needing to shell out $870.
“It’s definitely more prestige, and in order to get the types of ingredients that I would not really miss out on, it was kind of a necessity,” she told the NY Times.
“I tried to get the quality for the best price that we could, especially the vitamin C serum.”
All SKKN products are refillable, with shoppers copping a 15 per cent discount when purchasing the replacement pods.
Kim opted for her go-to neutral hue for the packaging, while Lori’s set is a bright teal – but despite this, critics claimed the products bare quite a resemblance.
Both skincare lines come in sleek cylinder bottles of varying sizes and short round jars.
SKKN contains a cleanser, a toner, an exfoliator, a hyaluronic acid serum, a vitamin C serum, a face cream, an eye cream, oil drops and a night oil, which are made with ingredients like niacinamide, glycolic and lactic acid, shea butter and squalene.
Meanwhile, Skn comes with a cleanser, a toner, a vitamin C serum, an eye cream and a niacinamide cream.
“The three main ingredients that I have in the majority of my products are vitamin C, hyaluronic acid and niacinamide because they have amazing benefits,” Lori, 25, told Vogue in October 2021 when her line launched.
“They help with hyperpigmentation, dark spots and firming — and just work really well together.”
She has yet to comment on the accusations surrounding Kim’s line.
Kim filed a slew of applications to trademark her skincare line name: In December 2020, she filed for the domains, in January 2021, she filed a trademark application for SKKN, and in March 2021, she filed to trademark SKKN BY KIM.
Sources close to the former Keeping Up With the Kardashians star told Page Six the United States Patent and Trademark Office did not cite any issues with regard to Harvey’s trademark — Skn by LH — during Kardashian’s application process.
However the trademark application sparked a cease and desist from another company, Beauty Concepts LLC, whose owner, Cyndie Lunsford, claimed she had been operating salons under the Skkn+ brand name since 2018.
The dispute, launched in July last year, appears to have disappeared but it’s not clear how it was resolved.
A recent Reddit thread titled “SKKN already in hot water. Will this be another Kimono situation?” has also popped up, with many weighing in on the situation.
“There is no excuse for this,” one user raged.
“This is really gross,” another added.
It’s not the first time Kim has launched a new product and been hit with a wave of controversy.
In June 2019, her now hugely successful shapewear line was slammed for its original name “Kimono”.
The star was accused of “cultural appropriation” as the word, which means “thing to wear”, is a Japanese ceremonial garment.
A few days later she changed the name to SKIMS and it has since gone on to become a global loungewear, lingerie and shapewear brand.
— With The NY Post