McGee & Co Dupes: An Honest Look at What You're Paying For

Searching for McGee & Co dupes usually means one specific thing: you have seen a Studio McGee room, you have found the faux tree that anchors it, you have seen the price, and you want to know whether the price is buying you something real. That is a fair question and it has a factual answer, because McGee & Co publish their own specifications and their own customer reviews.

This is not a hit piece. Studio McGee's styling is genuinely good, and taste is a real product. But you should know precisely which part of the bill is taste and which part is materials. This page confines itself to McGee & Co's two olive listings; the wider market as checked in August 2026, from $50 Amazon trees to RH's four-figure regular price, is charted tier by tier in why faux trees cost $80 or $900.

Eververda's olive trees answer the fullness question with a number rather than a styled photograph. Every Eververda product page carries a specification table holding what the manufacturer documented, and where a value was never documented it reads "Not specified" rather than being guessed. In October 2026, 375 such fields across 152 products were rewritten so an unknown reads as an unknown.

Why are McGee and Co so expensive?

Because you are paying for a curated, art-directed assortment rather than for unusual materials. The McGee & Co Faux 72" Olive Tree with Ceramic Pot listed at $718 when checked in August 2026, and the 96" version with a woven pot listed at $888. For both, the materials the brand publishes are "Plastic, Polyfoam, & Iron".

Iron is the interesting word in that list. An iron armature rather than a wire one is a real build upgrade: heavier, stiffer, better at holding branch positions. It is worth something. Plastic and polyfoam, on the other hand, are what the tiers below use as well; one rung down, Crate and Barrel sold a 5 ft faux olive at $249 in August 2026, with wire-framed polyester-and-plastic foliage and a cement planter in the box. So whatever separates $249 from $718, it is the armature, the fullness, the pot and the brand, and the brand does not claim otherwise.

What do McGee and Co's own reviewers say?

This is the part most comparison articles skip, and it is the most useful evidence available. The 72" olive tree carried five reviews when checked in August 2026. The most-upvoted of those is a four-star review from an interior designer which reads: "it wasn't really worth $500 when I saw it. Crate & Barrel and Pottery Barn have fuller looking ones for cheaper."

Note that this is a four-star review. The customer did not hate the tree. A design professional simply looked at it in person and concluded that fullness, the thing that actually makes a faux tree convincing, was available for less money elsewhere. That is the whole argument of this article, made by someone on McGee & Co's own website.

Here are the two McGee listings side by side, with the Crate and Barrel tree their own reviewer invoked as the reference row.

Neither review count grades the tree itself. But if you want to know how a faux olive holds up after a year in a real living room, one of these listings sat on a page carrying 476 reviews when checked on 12 October 2026, pooled across every size in that faux olive line rather than counted for the 5 ft tree alone, and the other had five.

What does the $718 actually include?

A pot, for one thing, and that deserves real credit. The 72" ships with a ceramic pot and the 96" with a woven one, as published in August 2026, and a decorative planter of that kind is heavy, costly to freight, and often a three-figure purchase on its own. McGee & Co are among the brands where the photograph and the packing list agree. Pottery Barn, by contrast, photographs its olive in a planter it sells separately, a habit worth understanding before you shop anywhere; we take it apart in the Pottery Barn olive tree guide.

The step from $718 to $888, on the August 2026 prices, buys two feet of height, from 72 in to 96 in, and swaps the ceramic pot for a woven one. The materials line does not change between the two listings. Taller means more foliage and a bigger armature, so the step is not empty, but it is the same recipe at a larger size.

How should you shop this tier instead?

With a method rather than a destination, because no single site owns the look. Four questions do the work:

• What is the armature? Wire, iron or steel. Iron is McGee's genuine upgrade over the wire tiers; make any alternative declare its own.
• How full is the canopy, counted rather than felt? Fullness is exactly what the designer-reviewer above was measuring, and it is visible in photographs if you count leaf clusters instead of admiring the styling.
• How wide is the canopy? Spread is what occupies a corner, and it is routinely absent from listings at every price. Ask for it.
• What pot arrives? McGee includes a real one. Many alternatives do not, and a missing planter quietly adds a three-figure line to the true cost of the room in the photo.

Put those four answers next to each other and the logo stops carrying information. The materials lists across this market converge on the same plastic-and-foam family, which is why a method beats a brand.

How Eververda's olive range compares

Where Eververda overlaps with the McGee question is on fullness, and our answer is to publish the number rather than ask you to judge a styled photograph. Artificial trees and plants are the whole of our catalogue rather than one category inside a general home range, spanning residential sizes through commercial-scale specimens in one place. Our artificial olive trees run up to an 8.2 ft olive in sculpted bonsai form at $1,807.99 CAD, and several commercial builds go higher still.

Our silk olive in 5.25 to 8 ft sizes carries a published leaf and fruit count at every height, $249 to $449 CAD, and a 4.9 to 6.9 ft olive on a natural wood trunk with a black pot runs $259 to $439 CAD. Counted foliage is our way of making the designer-reviewer's question answerable before the box arrives.

Every one of our listings publishes the manufacturer's specifications, with anything unknown marked Not specified: the same checks this article says to run on anyone's tree, ours included. Browse indoor trees for the room-first view, or ficus and fiddle leaf trees if olive is not the silhouette you need.

Eververda sells the products described in this section.

The takeaway on McGee & Co dupes: the styling is real, the pot is real, the iron armature is real, and the leaf is ordinary. Shop the armature, the counts, the width and the pot. Of those four, the count is the one a listing can simply publish instead of implying, and ours publish it per size, with anything the manufacturer does not document marked Not specified.

Frequently asked questions

Is the McGee and Co faux olive tree worth the money?

It depends what you are buying it for. The $718 and $888 prices, checked in August 2026, include a genuine ceramic or woven pot and an iron armature, both real upgrades, plus Studio McGee's curation. The leaf materials, plastic and polyfoam, match cheaper tiers, and the brand's own most-upvoted reviewer, an interior designer, found fuller-looking trees for less. Pay for it as taste, not as material science.

What are McGee and Co faux trees made of?

The published materials for both the 72" and 96" faux olive trees, as checked in August 2026, are plastic, polyfoam and iron. The iron armature is the notable part, since cheaper trees typically use wire. The plastic-and-foam foliage is the same material family the rest of the market publishes, from $249 trees upward, so the leaf itself is not where the price difference lives.

Do McGee and Co faux olive trees come with a pot?

Yes. As published in August 2026, the 72" olive includes a ceramic pot and the 96" includes a woven one. That is worth noting when comparing prices, because a decorative planter is heavy, expensive to ship, and can add a hundred dollars or more when bought separately. Some competitors photograph their trees in planters that are sold separately, so always check what actually ships.

What is the difference between the 72-inch and 96-inch McGee olive trees?

$170, two feet of height, and the pot. In August 2026 the 72" listed at $718 with a ceramic pot; the 96" listed at $888 with a woven pot. The published materials are identical, so the larger tree is the same construction scaled up with more foliage. Choose on ceiling height and how much corner you need filled, not on any specification difference.

Can I get a fuller faux olive tree for less than $718?

Fullness can be counted rather than judged. In Canadian dollars, Eververda's silk olive comes with a published per-size leaf and fruit count at $249 to $449 CAD. McGee & Co's own most-upvoted reviewer, an interior designer, said that fuller-looking trees were available for less, and the Crate and Barrel 5 ft listed at $249 in August 2026.

Competitor prices are USD list prices as published when checked in August 2026. Eververda prices are CAD and current as of 28 August 2026.