The last thing you need on your iPhone is another app, right? Well, you might want to delete Candy Crush or Trivia Crack — okay, maybe not Trivia Crack — to make room for SuperDuper, a nail polish app that helps you find drugstore duplicates of high-end brand colors. Don't want to shell out $50 for a Christian Louboutin red? Perfect, because the SuperDuper app will locate its closest relative at mass.
Currently, the app offers suggestions for high-end dupes of Chanel, Christian Louboutin, MAC, Tom Ford, and Yves Saint Laurent. While it's only five brands, there are dozens of color suggestions and for all sorts of shades, so it's more extensive than you'd think.
SuperDuper's mantra is thus: "We're on a mission to match the entire makeup universe and we're starting with our favorite nail polishes." If they keep going, we're all going to save a lot of money.
Since I am getting a manicure today, and because I'd like to support this program early on, I figured I'd give it a test drive. I picked a red, a purple, and a neutral lacquer color from Christian Louboutin, Chanel, and MAC, respectively, of which I wanted to see copies and let SuperDuper work its magic.
SuperDuper is impressive since it positions the high-end and the mass shade bottles side-by-side and determines whether or not it's an exact match or somewhat similar. The team tested each color on their nails and noted the different gradations based on things like angle and lighting, so the results are highly accurate.
So the app's masterminds really went the distance, tirelessly so, to determine which colors were closest to their pricier counterpart.
Is it an exact match? Are there some subtle differences? SuperDuper lets you know.
I usually go for a light shade on my mani, since it doesn’t show the inevitable chips, and darker hues on my toes. I know I want something similar to Chanel's Ballerina today, and it suggested Essie's High Maintenance. So when I hit up my corner salon in later afternoon, I'm going to ask for High Maintenance and see how it stacks up.
The cool thing about SuperDuper is that it's interactive, allowing users to suggest another dupe for the same high-end shade and you can email the SuperDuper folks if you think they got it wrong despite their tireless testing. We all see colors a bit differently based on our eyes. As Allure brilliantly noted, the entire Internet was divided over color perception and over whether or not we saw blue and black or whether saw white and gold with #TheDress. Nail polish is no different!
So far, I like what I saw with SuperDuper and am keeping the app active on my phone.
Try it when you schedule your next mani and are shopping for colors. We're literally inches from pedi season, so now is a good a time as any.
Images: Amy Sciarretto (5)
