James Charles Addresses His Feud With Wet n Wild, Following Announcement of His New Mini Palette

From Seventeen

Beauty blogger James Charles rarely involves himself in beauty community drama, but when Wet n Wild released a similar eyeshadow palette right after the launch of James' own Morphe palette, the YouTuber had a lot to say. Thus, a feud was born.

Here's everything that has happened so far.

October 2019

James releases a mini version of the palette, saying he stands by his formula.

On October 11, James announced that he'll be releasing a mini version of his original Morphe x James Charles Palette. In an interview with Seventeen he addressed the Wet n Wild drama.

"There will always be people who try to copy what you’re doing and they can copy the blueprint, but they'll never get an exact replica. And at the end of the day, there's reasons for dupes in the makeup community, cause some people can't afford things or some people just don't want to support people and that's fine," James explained.

"I think that what we brought to the table is really, really cool and something amazing for artists to be able to create any look you could possibly imagine, so I stand behind our formula and our palette a million percent over anybody who wants to copy it, but that’s their own prerogative," he said.

September 2019

James accuses Wet n Wild of copying his palette.

Wet n Wild announced their new eyeshadow palette, which will be launched exclusively at this year's DragCon. Fans quickly started pointing out that the design looks similar to James Charles' Morphe palette and the drama just started to grow from there.

James called out the beauty brand in a series of tweets, saying: "That’s crazy... your 'NEW' palette looks extremely similar."

Wet n Wild responded with a few tweets of their own.

James responded, making it very clear to fans that he believes Wet n Wild stole his design.

James comes for Wet n Wild on Instagram Stories.

Now, after a week of dishing out look after look at New York Fashion week, James is getting the final word in. When a follower asked "what's the tea on the wet and wild palette?", James got very real about the situation on Insta Stories.

"The 'tea' is that knockoffs from low quality brands will always exist in the makeup industry this is just crazy because I never looked at WnW as a 'low quality' brand / they have good products at affordable prices which is very important for the industry, but I truly thought they had more integrity," the beauty vlogger wrote. "Not only did they rip off my hard work and creativity, but also to partake in petty twitter comments and bullying... it's disappointing to say the least."

James then addressed commenters who claim that Wet N Wild's palette is just another rainbow palette, of which there are plenty already on the market.

"This 'new' palette is not just a 'rainbow' palette. It's an exact, low quality cheap knockoff and a sad ploy to capitalize on cancel culture. I will not pretend that I'm a stranger to being called out for copying a few times during my career," he explained.

"I recognize the irony here, but whether past situations were unintentional or an honest oversight, I have always righted my wrongs and have supported smaller artists. At the end of the day, copying is the sincerest form of flattery but I hope all brands take notes and have more [integrity] than this situation!"

Wet n Wild hasn't yet addressed his latest claims.

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