Fake OPI Mad As A Hatter :(

Hi!

Before I get into my Bar Testing again I thought I'd do a little post about fake OPI.

The other day I started looking into potentially getting Mad As A Hatter, since then I've realised that they are waaaay too expensive (someone's selling MAAH & Absolutely Alice for $61!). 

So the first one I got (the one in the pictures), I probably should have foreseen that it would be a fake but I'd never heard of anyone selling fake OPI before! I emailed the seller when I got it, suspecting it to be a fake, and he replied "you should note that I never said 100% authenticity guaranteed" (I imagine him speaking in a really douche-y voice), he said that I could send it back for a refund but honestly I don't want someone else to have to buy a pre-used bottle and one of my friends loves the colour and doesn't mind if it's not fake.

The second one I got thinking that it would be real! Again, I must be the most naive person ever! The listing said that she ran a salon and used these in her store and also that these were factory seconds. It was exactly the same as the first bottle but I didn't have the energy to send it back to her and she stuck to her factory seconds story so I just left it.

At least I can use this to make a little tutorial on how to tell if your OPI is real or fake. I've learned quite a bit through my google-ing and I know for a fact that some of the tutorials say that certain things make an OPI fake that aren't true, so hopefully I can cover everything!

Also I used a Kleenex box as the background because the puppies are cute, at least there's something good in the photos haha!

Compared to OPI Pirouette My Whistle

Off centre label

Lid touches bottle on the fake

Off centre label

Real OPI on the left, different brushes

Real OPI on the left, fake has a thinner lid

Colour shot

Colour shot

All in all this is a pretty good fake, the colour is really similar to the real MAAH although I can't compare to a real one. It even had the OPI engraved onto the brush! The main thing that was different was the smell, it didn't really smell like any of my other OPIs. One of the main things that people comment on for fake MAAHs is that instead of having magenta and teal glitter they have red and green glitter, this one I would say that there is definitely teal glitter, but there's red glitter too.

Main things to look out for in Fake OPIs:

1. Height difference in comparison to real OPIs.
2. Different lid's to OPIs, this can include a lighter lid, thinner lid, no 'cog' like markings on the inside of the lid. If there is no gap between the bottle and the lid, it's most likely a fake.
3. Some cheap fakes don't have OPI engraved on the white part of the brush.
4. Missing a label on the bottom of the bottle (some have just the top label with the 'peel here' part and some have just the label underneath).
5. There are heaps of websites that say that if your OPI doesn't have 4 warning signs on the back then it's a fake, this is WRONG! I have bought OPIs from David Jones, Hairhouse Warehouse, other beauty stores, and TransDesign. None of these have 4 warning signs, actually I think there might be one in my entire collection that has 4 warning signs. The extra one warning sign is to say that there's more information on the bottom of the bottle. So it doesn't mean that your collection is fake if none of them have it.

That's all I've got at the moment. Have you guys ever encountered fake OPIs? What did they look like? I've heard some people say that theirs are laughably fake, like wrong colours etc.

See you next time!

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