Dae Styling Cream Dupes: The $9 e.l.f. Match, Compared by INCI

Line the two INCI lists up and the borrowing is hard to miss. Dae opens water, cetearyl alcohol, glycerin, neopentyl glycol diheptanoate, propanediol. e.l.f. opens with the same four in the same order, slots VP/VA Copolymer in fifth, then propanediol sixth. Both use ceteareth-20 as the emulsifier, dimethicone for slip and behentrimonium chloride as the cationic conditioner. The declared fragrance allergens overlap on six counts: limonene, linalool, linalyl acetate, geranyl acetate, pinene and citral sit on both labels, which is why the scent reads as the same bright citrus rather than a near miss.

The gap is the oil phase. Dae lists coconut oil, grapeseed seed oil, prickly pear seed oil, shea butter, moringa leaf extract and dragon fruit (Hylocereus undatus) extract. e.l.f. lists none of those. In their place it runs creatine at position eight, then hydrolyzed pea protein and hydrolyzed vegetable protein, which strengthen and hold but do not soften. Read off the label, that should show on coarse or bleached hair as rougher ends by the second day. e.l.f. also states 450F heat protection on its product page, a figure dae does not publish at all.

Two Yahoo editors have written the range up. Tiffany Dodson Davis, a beauty commerce editor, said the cream's lightweight formula does not feel sticky or weigh her hair down and has a flexible hold. Beauty director Jenna Rosenstein reviewed the separate $6 wand, not this cream.

At $9 for 5 fl oz against $30 for 5 fl oz, you keep $21 and the same volume.

This one matches Dae's botanical half rather than its base. Both labels carry Salvia Hispanica (chia) seed extract and Linum Usitatissimum (linseed) seed extract, the two texture extracts Dae's marketing leans on. Both also carry seven of the same unglamorous minor ingredients: hydroxyethylcellulose, isopropyl alcohol, tetrasodium glutamate diacetate, xylitol, caprylic acid, tocopherol and a sodium/disodium phosphate buffer. They sit at different depths on the two lists, but a run of seven shared minors on a $9.99 drugstore label tells you more than any percentage-match score does.

The film chemistry is where it diverges upward. Not Your Mother's runs capryloyl glycerin/sebacic acid copolymer at position eight and Polyester-11 at nine, both film formers picked for resistance to damp air, before VP/VA Copolymer at eleven. Dae pairs VP/VA with polyquaternium-73 and nothing else. On the label that is a humidity-resistant film where Dae's is not, though I have not put the two through a wet day side by side.

It is silicone-free, and that is a cost, not a marketing bonus. Without dimethicone the hair grips more while wet and takes more work through a brush, and the dry finish is flatter. The oils are ethyl macadamiate at four, plus argan and squalane, rather than coconut and prickly pear.

At 5.5 oz for $9.99 you get half an ounce more than the Dae for $20.01 less, plus a stated 450F heat and UV claim the Dae does not make.

If what you wanted from the Dae was the shine, this gets closer than the e.l.f. does. Dimethicone sits second on the list and amodimethicone fourth. Amodimethicone is the substantive one, meaning it binds to damaged sections of the cuticle and survives a rinse. Dae has dimethicone too, at position eleven, below the orange peel oil. Straight and wavy hair gets more light bounce and more separation from a silicone load that heavy.

What it does not have is a vinylpyrrolidone film former. No VP/VA copolymer, no PVP, nothing that sets a curl pattern. Polyacrylamide at six, plus chitosan, algin and carrageenan further down, give a little structure, and hold is light by design. Curly hair will get smoothing and shine without shape, which is a real loss against the Dae.

It shares cetrimonium chloride, glycerin, hexylene glycol, caprylyl glycol and ethylhexylglycerin with Dae, so the conditioning backbone is familiar. Ethylhexyl methoxycinnamate is in here as a UV filter, which Dae does not offer, so this one earns its keep in summer. With silicones at two and four, anyone co-washing or on a curly-girl routine should plan for build-up and a clarifying wash. That is a read of the label, not a test result.

Target listed it at $11.99 for 5 fl oz on 26 August 2026, which is $2.40 an ounce against Dae's $6.00 for the same size.

Fifteen ingredients, no butters and no plant oils. Where Dae builds a cream on cetearyl alcohol and behentrimonium chloride, Odele builds a gel-lotion on hydroxyethylcellulose and polyquaternium-10, then sets it with PVP and maltodextrin/VP copolymer. On fine or oily-rooted hair that difference is the entire point, because Dae's shea butter and coconut oil are what make a fine wave collapse by lunchtime, and neither is in here.

Propanediol comes second, against fifth on Dae's list, and hydroxyethylcellulose is shared too. There is a silicone, though Odele's is linoleamidopropyl PG-dimonium chloride phosphate dimethicone rather than plain dimethicone. A quaternised silicone like that deposits from water and comes off in a normal shampoo, so build-up should be less of a worry than with a silicone-heavy cream.

The cost is softness. Nothing across fifteen ingredients conditions the way Dae's oil phase does, so coarse or very dry hair reads it as crisp rather than smooth, and scrunching out the cast is not optional. The scent is oakmoss, ylang ylang and cucumber, nothing like Dae's citrus, which matters if the smell was half of why you wanted the original.

$11.99 for 6 fl oz works out at $2.00 an ounce, a third of Dae's $6.00. Odele's own site shows 4.6 stars across 418 reviews and cites lab testing behind its 24-hour frizz-control line.

The overlap here is specific enough to spell out. JVN lists Salvia Hispanica seed extract, Linum Usitatissimum seed extract, Butyrospermum Parkii butter, tocopherol, xylitol and caprylic acid. Every one of those sits on Dae's own posted list. What differs is the carrier: JVN runs squalane at position two and C13-15 alkane, the ingredient LookFantastic's listing names as hemisqualane, where Dae uses dimethicone. This is the silicone-free version of roughly the same idea.

Dry, coarse or bleached hair is the case for it. Squalane absorbs into the hair rather than sitting on it as a film, which is the argument for the swap, though I have not measured deposition either way. PVP sits fourth and maltodextrin/VP copolymer further down, supplying the hold Dae gets from VP/VA and polyquaternium-73. JVN claims a 97% frizz reduction after one use, which came from a controlled hair-swatch study rather than a head of hair, and should be read on those terms.

Now the problem. At $28 for 5 fl oz you save $2 on the Dae. That is not a dupe price and I am not going to dress it up as one. Buy this for the silicone-free formula or because you can actually get hold of it.

That second reason is the strong one in Britain. Cult Beauty had it at £19.20 on 26 August 2026, down from £24, and LookFantastic listed the same 147 mL at £24.

At $8.39 for 6 fl oz this is $1.40 an ounce, under a quarter of Dae's $6.00, and the formula is properly different rather than a cheap tracing of it. There is no cetearyl alcohol, no behentrimonium chloride and no VP/VA copolymer. Tapioca starch sits second, C12-15 alkyl benzoate third, polyquaternium-37 fourth, coconut oil fifth and shea butter sixth, with PVM/MA copolymer at ten doing the film-forming.

Starch plus polyquaternium-37 plus an acid-functional film former is curl-gel construction with the crunch dialled back. On the label that should set a firmer, longer-held pattern than Dae's cream manages, which is the trade if your complaint is that your waves have dropped by mid-afternoon. If your complaint is crunch, this will irritate you, because there is a cast and it needs breaking with your hands once dry.

Coconut oil sits fifth, high enough to matter. On fine hair it weighs down, anyone whose hair objects to coconut should skip it outright, and the scent is coconut rather than citrus, which is a long way from the Dae experience.

Sixteen ingredients, no heat-protection claim, no dimethicone and no attempt at Dae's shine. It does one job cheaply and does not pretend to prep a blowout. Target listed it at $8.39 on 26 August 2026.