Bobbi Brown's Jones Road Will Rename Wide Awake After YISE Clash
Bobbi Brown's Jones Road will rename its Wide Awake concealer after Molly Sims accused the brand of copying her YISE eye cream. Commenters then dragged YSL, Nécessaire and Dominique Cosmetics into it.
Updated
The takeaway
- Jones Road launched Wide Awake Brightening Neutralizer and Concealer on a Thursday; Molly Sims posted her accusation video on Saturday.
- Bobbi Brown apologized and said Jones Road will rename the product after a pre-launch trademark search showed no other ownership of the name.
- Commenters accused YISE of copying YSL Touche Éclat shade names and packaging, Nécessaire packaging, and a 2022/3 Dominique Cosmetics product also called Wide Awake.
Bobbi Brown has committed to renaming Jones Road's Wide Awake Brightening Neutralizer and Concealer after Molly Sims publicly accused an unnamed brand of copying her YISE best-seller, Wide Awake Brightening Eye Cream.
Sims, the model and founder of YISE beauty, posted an emotional Instagram Reel and TikTok on Saturday about the Jones Road product, which launched last Thursday. Her eye cream debuted more than two years ago and comes in four color-correcting tints to help conceal under-eye darkness.
"I don't normally post stuff like this, but over the last few days, I've had friends, customers, brand partners, retail partners DM, text, and email me that a brand that I love, use, and support not only used the exact name of a product I launched two years ago, but also their marketing copy, and campaign feels a little too close to home," Sims said into her front-facing camera. "You can delete the comments, but my YISE loyalists run deep and can tell when something is off."
Sims said she felt personally betrayed. "I can't explain how disappointed, honestly sad, and hurt I am to see this from another female founder who I've known for years and have looked up to in this industry," she said. She emphasized the scale of her operation: "My marketing team of five—we are small, but we are mighty. We have tiny budgets; we are incredibly scrappy."
She added: "There is room for all of us, all of us. There is room for more women to build great brands, create great products, and have great ideas of their own. We should be inspiring each other, not taking from each other."
Allure reached out to YISE for additional comment but has not received a response.
Brown responded the next day in a text-only Instagram post. "Last week, the Jones Road Beauty team and I launched Wide Awake neutralizer and concealer. We didn't realize Molly Sims has a product with the same name in her YISE beauty collection. This was a mistake. Prior to our launch, a trademark search showed no other ownership of the name," Brown wrote. "However, we're changing our product name moving forward, and will no longer call it Wide Awake. I would never knowingly copy another product's name. To Molly Sims and her team at YISE, I'm sorry this happened, and we're taking steps to correct it."
In an emailed statement to Allure, Brown reiterated that the pre-launch trademark search showed no registration and that the team did not know YISE had a product called Wide Awake. "Regardless, I have great respect for Molly, YISE, and all my fellow beauty founders, and I would never want to copy another product's name," Brown told Allure. "So we're doing the right thing and changing the product name moving forward." A rep for Brown said Jones Road is conducting due diligence and a comprehensive name search before renaming the product.
The comment sections quickly widened the dispute. Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, founder of personal-care brand Papatui, wrote: "So sorry Molly! I see it all the time on my end. Way to protect the thing you've built. Keep protecting, keep building." Beautyblender founder Rea Ann Silva wrote: "I feel u. My business and product beautyblender, the category creator, is probably the most knocked off product in the beauty industry. Many of my clients went on to enter the beauty industry and knocked me off, so I deeply understand your disappointment! But I'm here to tell you there is nobody like you and that's what you go with. Wipe those tears and keep it moving!"
Other commenters turned the accusations back on YISE. Nick Axelrod-Welk, cofounder of Nécessaire who went on to cofound Courteney Cox's Homecourt and his own fragrance brand Contrapposto, wrote: "But you directly knocked off the @necessaire packaging?" Allure has reached out to him for further comment.
One commenter noted that YISE's shade names mirror YSL's Touche Éclat concealer: "If you look at the YSL Touche Éclat concealer there are also 4 variations of their shade names being used (ex. YSL Luminous Honey vs. YISE Sheer Honey, YSL Luminous Mocha vs. YISE Sheer Mocha, YSL Luminous Peach vs. YISE Sheer Peach etc.) so when she says 'too close to home' in this video it's annoying to see she's done the same with other brands." Others pointed to the similar gold packaging of YISE's Wide Awake and YSL Beauty's Touche Éclat. Earlier this year, Sims changed her brand's original name YSE to YISE, a move some have speculated stems from a trademark dispute between Yves Saint Laurent Parfums and Sims's LLC.
Another commenter raised an even more direct comparison: "Ok but what about the fact that Dominique Cosmetics launched a product called Wide Awake in 2022/3." As of publication, Googling "Wide Awake Concealer" returns the Dominique Cosmetics concealer as the first result.
None of the "Wide Awake" products from YISE, Jones Road, or Dominique Cosmetics could be mistaken for one another on sight, and beauty brands have marketed concealers around the idea of wakefulness for decades. The dispute, resolved with a name change rather than litigation, underscores how little legal protection common product names carry—and how quickly founder-driven disputes over originality can escalate in a category where, as the source notes, truly undeniable originality is rare.
Source: Allure; Source: cna.st
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Senior reporter covering business strategy at Eurasian Beauty Journal.
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