Luxury Fashion Meets Cultural Legacy: Legal Dimensions of the Kolhapuri and Prada Controversy

Abstract

At Milan Fashion Week June 2025, an unheard-of revolution unfolded on the global stage, initiated by a pair of sandals from the prestigious Italian Luxury Brand Prada. The brand unveiled its Spring/Summer menswear collection, which featured several artistic pieces, but it was the ‘minimalist leather sandals’ distinguished by a distinctive toe-loop design. The Western Fashion Press crowned it as another iteration of refined simplicity. For viewers of India, it was easy to recognise their cultural heritage, these were Kolhapuri Chappals, the legacy of Maharashtra and Karnataka, the iconic handcrafted leather sandals with an eight-century heritage rooted in the soil. But the woods caught fire after noticing the omission of the luxury brand, which failed to credit the inspiration. This transcended to a Fashion controversy, crystallising decades of simmering discontent into a focused global debate on cultural appropriation, the profound inadequacy of intellectual property frameworks in protecting traditional knowledge, and the stark power imbalance between global luxury giants and the native artisan communities whose living heritage fuels their seasonal creativity. This paper aims to legally analyse the Prada Kolhapuri Chappal Controversy. The paper traces the divergent yet parallel histories of both entities and presents the artisan chronicles of the legal battle in the Public Interest Litigation before the Bombay High Court in July 2025. The paper further analyses India’s Geographical Indications of Goods (Registration and Protection) Act, 1999 (GI Act) and its ability to protect India’s culture from being overshadowed by the Fashionable Western Coloniality. The paper also tracks down the painful and persistent global pattern of cultural extraction in the name of ‘fashion’, tracing controversies involving Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Dior, Urban Outfitters and other big names of the fashion industry. This pattern proves that the Prada controversy was not merely an isolated incident but a systematic issue. The paper concludes by providing a pathway for action by building transparency, developing comprehensive legal reforms, ethical collaborations and the much-needed shift in the ethos from unilateral extraction to equitable partnership.