During Milan Fashion Week last June, Prada sent a divisive series of shoes down the runway. Fashion often courts controversy, but the backlash to this incident rang alarm bells at the Italian house, sending it on a multi-step course correction. The shoes in question were unassuming at first glance—open-toed and made of thin brown leather with braided detailing. It was their provenance that ruffled feathers: they bore a striking resemblance to Kolhapuri chappals, an Indian style of footwear traditionally handcrafted in Maharashtra. More importantly, they had been presented without any mention of this heritage.
This wasn’t an isolated incident. Earlier that year, a Reformation capsule collection by Devon Lee Carlson featured a skirt, top, and scarf combination that looked identical to the lehenga and dupatta silhouette ubiquitous in India. Singer Gracie Abrams and model Bella Hadid have both been spotted in similar looks, with many initially referring to the fabric draped over their shoulders as a “Scandinavian scarf” instead of a dupatta. Each incident was met with the same incredulous response from India’s fashion community.
@chanelofficial Gracie Abrams at the 98th edition of the Oscars®. #CHANELandCinema #CHANELJewelry ♬ son original – ChanelOfficial
This is not a new story; the entanglement between India and the Western fashion world spans centuries. Tracing it yields a lesson in history, economics, and culture as much as in style. “India has such a rich heritage of textiles,” says Dr Ruby Kashyap Sood, a professor at the National Institute of Fashion Technology in New Delhi. “This diversity of materials, techniques, and designs has always been intriguing for the West.” Calling it a love affair might be reductive—and if it were one, it has often been uneven. In imperial times, Europe used India as a major source of not only materials—in the form of cotton, chintz, muslin, and wool—but of style, with garments like the sari and Kashmir shawl proving to be enduring influences on Western dressing. Even the vocabulary of modern fashion can, in many instances, be traced back to India: the words bandana, cummerbund, pyjama, and khaki all originate from Hindi or Urdu.
This is, however, an ever-changing relationship, and like any great love, there have been moments of true passion and connection. “India has long been embedded in the global fashion system—not only a passing reference, but also a sustained source of material and visual language,” says Akshat Bansal, founder and creative director of New Delhi-based label Bloni.
Bansal’s label translates traditional Indian craftsmanship through a global language of dress, and their works are often in conversation with Western designers. He points to Dior’s longtime collaboration with Mumbai’s Chanakya School of Craft under Maria Grazia Chiuri as an example of this spirit of collaboration. It culminated in the richly coloured silks and hand-embroidered sequins of Dior’s Fall/Winter 2023 show, held at the Gateway of India and welcomed with open arms by the Indian fashion community. Karl Lagerfeld’s whimsical Paris-Bombay collection for Chanel received similar praise, as does Dries Van Noten’s continual engagement with Indian textiles. “What stands out is the continuity,” Bansal notes. “India has remained a constant on the global moodboard, both as inspiration and production.”
Over time, however, the balance of influence has not remained static. India today is a modern nation, one with institutional clout and a population that is increasingly informed and vocal. Following the backlash from both the Maharashtra government and citizens online, Prada promptly reached out to the Maharashtra Chamber of Commerce to open a dialogue. It began manufacturing 2,000 pairs of Kolhapuri chappals in collaboration with artisans in Maharashtra and Karnataka, and sponsored hundreds of these artisans to train at Prada ateliers in Italy. Expectations are being asserted more clearly, and the lines of engagement are being redrawn.
Hema Bose, founder of creative agency Maison Bose, which specialises in bringing Indian creative talent to international audiences, has seen this shift first-hand. “While we have worked to position Indian brands more strategically, there has also been a growing openness from the global industry to receive and support that,” she says.
For Bansal, the change comes from within. “We, as Indians, are beginning to recognise and value our position as a global reference point.” This sentiment is shared by renowned designer and couturier Gaurav Gupta, who has not only witnessed the shift over more than two decades but helped to pioneer it through a practice built on the labour of hundreds of artisans. “The Indian client today is far more aware and global in their outlook,” he says.
What that awareness demands, increasingly, is accountability. The pride that accompanies Western interest in Indian craft has limits—and those limits are now being stated plainly. “You cannot borrow from a culture or from indigenous communities without acknowledging where it comes from, and ensuring that the people behind it are credited and fairly compensated,” Bansal says. The question is whether credit alone is sufficient.
Here, the distinction between cultural appropriation and appreciation becomes increasingly relevant—but it can also fall short. Over the past decade, the debate has been stretched thin across social media posts and comment sections, often losing precision along the way. Credit and compensation are essential, but the conversation can stall at semantics. Is it enough for Western brands to do all the thinking and making, and slap a “Made in India” disclaimer on at the end? For Bansal, the issue runs deeper. “The conversation is still too often framed around Indian craft applied onto global silhouettes,” he says. “What is still missing is the idea of India not only as a site of making, but a site of thinking.
Reorienting the issue around thinking is a key shift. Fashion, after all, is a creative endeavour. If an entire nation’s contribution to it is reduced only to handiwork—no matter how painstaking and rooted in heritage—it is handicapped. “The depth of material intelligence and the sophisticated systems of making that exist in India are consistently overlooked,” says Bansal. Both he and Gupta see a light at the end of the tunnel, in the form of a new generation of designers rethinking what defines Indian fashion—one that they lead with intention. Both champion distinctly Indian techniques and artisanship, but rarely confine themselves to traditional Indian silhouettes. For Gupta, the hundreds of artisans in his employ are the heart of his practice; for Bansal, the process begins as early as growing his own fibre and raw materials. “Central to Bloni’s vision is building a farm-led ecosystem within India,” Bansal says.
Where Bansal and Gupta get into the weeds with their approach, Bose takes a bird’s-eye view—and she sees an image of overall structural disparity. “Europe has long benefited from powerful conglomerates and structured ecosystems like LVMH, which not only build brands but sustain and scale them globally,” she says. “India, despite its depth of talent and craftsmanship, still lacks that kind of unified, strategic infrastructure.” Competing on someone else’s terms, she argues, is beside the point. “What becomes far more relevant is identifying what allows a brand to build its own kind of relevance.”
That reframing is crucial. When Prada was compelled to return to Maharashtra—not merely to apologise, but to collaborate, to train, to manufacture—it was not charity, but correction. The Kolhapuri chappal did not need Prada to validate it; if anything, the reverse was true. In that inversion lies something more useful than optimism: a precedent. Ideas and style now move through networks at near-instant speed, and it is becoming harder to obscure where either originates. India has always been making, shaping, thinking, and creating. The difference, now, is that the record is harder to erase.
This story first appeared on GRAZIA Singapore.
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