When Luxury Forgets Lineage: Prada Goes From 'Quiet' Luxury To Loud Omission

When Prada walked a Rs 1.2 lakh sandal down the Milan runway — eerily identical to the humble Kolhapuri chappal, it wasn't just a fashion moment. It was a reputation inflection point.

A high-end design house had, in one aesthetic sweep, rebranded centuries of Indian artisanry without attribution. And in doing so, it exposed a growing fracture in global brand storytelling: the inability to navigate the thin line between homage and appropriation, legality and legitimacy, ethics and PR.

As someone who works at the intersection of legal nuance, brand risk, and reputation operations, this moment is not surprising. It's cyclical. But each cycle now accelerates faster, with sharper audience memory and less forgiveness.

When I began writing this piece, Prada had not yet responded to the backlash over its Kolhapuri-inspired sandals. Before the editors could hit publish, the brand issued a speedy acknowledgment within 24 hours of the scandal. What changed? What didn’t? Let's decode what this global brand mismanagement of cultural risk in real time reveals. It is a revelation, not just about Prada, but about the modern brand playbook itself.

Kolhapuri chappals have been GI-tagged since 2019. That gives them geographic-indication protection, and that protection exists within India's borders. But there's no legal requirement for a European brand to credit Indian craftspeople unless they're infringing trademarks or IP filed locally.

And yet, we're not talking about a copyright or counterfeit claim here. We're talking about reputation currency. The slow erosion of cultural credit in a borderless luxury economy is frowned upon by sentiment, if not statute.

Luxury brands increasingly operate in what I call a cultural licence economy. The unspoken rule: if you take inspiration from a deeply rooted tradition, you must offer attribution, if not compensation. Consumers now judge brands on whether they use cultural elements with context or without conscience.

Prada's chappals failed that test. Proving, once again, how poorly equipped even legacy global brands are in navigating the conscious consumer's ethical expectations.

This wasn't a direct copy-paste scandal à la Shein or Temu. Prada's craftsmanship, materials and supply chains are indisputably different. But the silhouette is unmistakable. Generations in Maharashtra have worn, lived in and handed it down. 

Kolhapuri chappals are not just footwear. They are an 800-year-old artisanal tradition, hand-tooled in the Maharashtra districts of Kolhapur, Sangli, Solapur and Belgaum. Their historical roots run deep, from the court of the Chalukyas to the saints of Bhakti tradition who walked barefoot across the Deccan, wearing these chappals as both symbol and tool of asceticism.

The design evolved over generations:

• The Kapashi design, known for its side-laced upper.

•  The Bakkalnali, worn by kings and poets.

• And eventually, the now-ubiquitous tan leather toe-ring chappal.

In a time when luxury buyers are increasingly identity-conscious, cultural erasure doesn't go unnoticed. One viral tweet called the move "theft, not tribute". Others asked: how does heritage get repackaged as luxury without its origin story?

The scandal wasn't the design. It was the silence. Silence, in today's landscape, doesn't read as neutrality. It reads as avoidance.

However, this is no longer a story of silence. It's a story about optics. What began as outrage over the visual likeness quickly shifted into a reputational stress test of intent, timing and emotional intelligence. These are areas beyond, strictly, legality.

This controversy also exposes India's vulnerability. Our cultural exports are globally influential but structurally under-protected. We lack the international enforcement pathways to protect intangible heritage.

GI tags, on their own, are blunt instruments. We need international reciprocity treaties that go beyond protecting Darjeeling tea or Basmati rice. Intangible craft forms developed in our heritage have serious labour and meticulous craftsmanship to them, which needs better platforms in order not to die in obscurity.

Hermes still sells a bag made in Ahmedabad, Indian craftsmen produce embroidery for couture houses, the shoes of many famous labels are made in Indian workshops, even as Indian consumers queue outside the likes of Delhi's Emporio Mall for monogrammed bags mass-produced in anonymous factories.

We need diplomacy that understands the economic potential of culture.

Imagine if India had a global "craft attache" system, with IP lawyers and cultural historians embedded in every major fashion capital. Imagine if our Ministry of Commerce partnered with Milan Design Week to partner and spotlight, instead of ending up protesting.

Kolhapuri chappals are made by hand in a few districts in Maharashtra. Acknowledgment from a brand like Prada could've created a demand surge, better wages and cultural recognition. Instead, it sparked a meme cycle.

Here's the good news for Prada, and for brands watching nervously from the sidelines. The reputation damage is real, but reversible. A belated tribute, a donation to artisan collectives, a co-created spotlight series can all still reshape the arc.

Conscious consumers are not an enraged lot, sitting on the edge of their seats, ready to cancel brands. If they see repair, they allow it.

For legacy brands used to controlling the narrative, what just happened with Prada is unfamiliar territory. But it's a necessary evolution. In the era of conscious consumption, silence reads as avoidance, and delay as damage management. For Indian founders, lawyers and brand leaders, there's a larger takeaway.

If you're building a product rooted in Indian culture, file globally, tell your story defensively and anticipate appropriation before it happens. If you're advising global brands in India, integrate local insight into your legal and marketing counsel.

Prada's Kolhapuri moment is not a scandal. It's a test. A test of whether legacy brands can move from ownership to stewardship in a world where culture is not up for grabs.

This article was written twice. Once when silence was the story. And now, when optics are. That in itself is a case study: How quick pivots can manage headlines, but not always heal fractures.

If brands want to borrow culture, they must also show accountability. And if India wants to protect its lineage, it must learn to pre-empt erasure, because tweeting about it once it's gone viral goes only so far.

And for those of us in the business of brand rescue and legal narrative strategy, it's a reminder: culture can be translated into capital if brands are hardcoded with partner energy instead of overwriter energy, into their DNA.

This misstep is another reminder that building bridges between legality and legitimacy matters. 

By Prachi Shrivastava, founder of Lawfinity Solutions and Vakil Vetted.

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of NDTV Profit or its editorial team.