The row over the Jones Road Wide Awake concealer has drawn in three beauty brands, a clutch of fellow founders, and a wave of counter-accusations, after Molly Sims, founder of YISE, posted an emotional video claiming makeup artist Bobbi Brown’s brand had launched a product with the same name as one of her own best-sellers.
How the Jones Road Wide Awake concealer dispute unfolded
Jones Road launched its Wide Awake Brightening Neutralizer and Concealer last Thursday. Days later, Sims posted an Instagram Reel and TikTok in which she did not name Brown or Jones Road directly, but made the target of her frustration clear to viewers.
‘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 to camera, visibly upset.
YISE’s Wide Awake Brightening Eye Cream, which comes in four colour-correcting tints for concealing under-eye darkness, has been in the brand’s range for over two years and is described by Sims as one of its best-sellers. Her team, she said, numbers five people on the marketing side. ‘We have tiny budgets; we are incredibly scrappy,’ she added. ‘There is room for all of us. We should be inspiring each other, not taking from each other.’
Brown responded quickly with a public statement on Instagram. ‘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. She confirmed the product would be renamed. ‘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 a follow-up statement to Allure, Brown reiterated that the trademark search Jones Road conducts before every product launch had returned no conflict. ‘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,’ she said. ‘So we’re doing the right thing and changing the product name moving forward.’ A representative for Brown confirmed the brand is currently conducting due diligence and a comprehensive name search before settling on a replacement.
Counter-accusations pull in Dominique Cosmetics and YSL
Support for Sims came from fellow founders including Dwayne Johnson, who wrote: ‘Way to protect the thing you’ve built. Keep protecting, keep building.’ Beautyblender founder Rea Ann Silva also expressed solidarity, saying she ‘deeply understands’ the disappointment of seeing a product copied.
But the comments section turned complicated. Nick Axelrod-Welk, co-founder of Nécessaire, pointed a raised-hand emoji at YISE and wrote, ‘But you directly knocked off the @necessaire packaging?’ Others drew attention to the shade names in YISE’s Wide Awake range, comparing them to YSL Touche Éclat, and noted a broader similarity in gold packaging between the two products.
The thread that gained perhaps the most traction concerned a third brand entirely. Commenters pointed out that Dominique Cosmetics launched a product called Wide Awake in 2022 or 2023, before YISE’s own version reached the market, and that if you search ‘Wide Awake Concealer’ online, the Dominique Cosmetics product is the first result. The Los Angeles-based brand was founded by Christen Dominique, who also serves as its creative director, according to RocketReach.
Separately, Sims changed her brand’s original name, YSE, to YISE earlier this year. Some observers have linked the move to a dispute over the former name involving Yves Saint Laurent Parfums and Sims’s LLC, though no official confirmation of that has been given.
None of the three Wide Awake products (from YISE, Jones Road, or Dominique Cosmetics) could be visually mistaken for one another. The dispute is less about confusion in the marketplace and more about who owns a phrase and who can prove it first. Trademark searches, as this row has demonstrated, do not always surface unregistered but established names in use by smaller brands, leaving founders in a crowded, scrappy industry to sort it out publicly.
Jones Road has committed to a name change and says the renaming process, including a full name search, is under way.
