Introduction
When Prada unveiled open-toe leather sandals at Milan Fashion Week - items that closely resembled traditional Kolhapuri chappals, the reaction was immediate and fierce. Priced at roughly ₹1.2 lakh a pair and marketed without any mention of the Indian craft or the artisans behind it, the sandals prompted accusations of cultural appropriation. The episode exposed a practical weakness in how intellectual property protections work for rural artisans: although Kolhapuri chappals carry a Geographical Indication (GI) in India, global brands can still reproduce the look under different names and profit at a scale that the original makers never see.
That gap between law and lived reality is stark. The GI tag for Kolhapuri chappal is held institutionally by Maharashtra’s leather development corporations such as LIDCOM and LIDKAR, but the protections this gives do not translate easily into economic gain for the thousands of individual artisans who rely on the craft. The Prada case showed how a multinational can sidestep name-based restrictions and sell a near-identical design internationally, leaving artisans with little immediate recourse and the bulk of the commercial value captured elsewhere.
Background and Context: The Economics of Appropriation
Kolhapuri chappals are more than footwear; they are a living craft that supports many families. By 2020, the sector was estimated at around ₹9 crore, with roughly 10,000 artisans producing some 600,000 pairs a year, and about 30 percent of that output destined for export. Individual craftsmen, especially in areas like Nipani and Belgaum, typically make about 20 pairs a month and earn only ₹5,000-6,000 monthly. These figures show how little of the retail price reaches the hands that actually make the chappals.
The price gap between artisan-made chappals and luxury imitations is extreme. Traditional pairs generally sell for between ₹40 and ₹200, while the Prada item reportedly carried a price tag equivalent to over £1,000 (about ₹1.17 lakh) or was seen in reports at around ₹1.2 lakh. That difference, a markup of thousands of times the artisan price, points to a market structure in which value is captured by intermediaries and global brands, not by the originators of the design and technique.
Failures in the IP System
A closer look shows three overlapping ways the IP framework fails rural artisans.
First, legal loopholes and enforcement gaps weaken GI protections in practice. The GI Act secures names like “Kolhapuri chappal,” but it does not directly block visual or design similarities if a product is marketed under a different name. Prada’s choice to label its product “Toe Ring Sandals” rather than “Kolhapuri” highlights how a brand can replicate a distinctive T-strap shape, construction methods, and overall aesthetic without technically infringing the GI name. International enforcement is also uneven: EU and other overseas markets do not automatically enforce Indian GIs, and pursuing legal action across borders is expensive and slow, beyond the reach of individual artisans.
Second, the economic impact of such appropriation is damaging. Even where the GI tag exists, economic gains rarely reach artisans. Intermediaries and larger firms take much of the value along the supply chain, leaving makers in precarious subsistence. When a luxury label markets a similar item at a huge markup, it reframes the craft as “inspiration” rather than recognizing the craft’s direct contributions. This reinforces a historic pattern in which designs drawn from traditional knowledge benefit distant markets while original creators remain underpaid and sidelined.
Third, institutional and policy misalignment prevents effective protection at the grassroots level. Governments and corporations may hold legal title to a GI, but individual artisans often lack the power, resources, or standing to enforce it quickly. Complaints tend to move through bureaucratic channels, requiring institutional intervention that can take months or years, time during which infringing products can be designed, produced, and widely distributed. The broader international framework - TRIPS-level protections and bilateral arrangements, sets minimum standards but allows room for luxury companies to adapt designs or rename products in ways that sidestep meaningful liability.
How the Economics play out on the Ground
The arithmetic is striking. An artisan who makes twenty pairs a month at roughly ₹5,000-6,000 income equates to ₹250-300 per pair in realized earnings. Luxury-brand copies sell for sums as high as ₹1.2 lakh, creating a gulf between production cost, local sale price, and international retail value. That gulf is not explained by higher production inputs alone; it reflects value extraction at multiple levels - marketing, distribution, branding, and retail positioning, without any proportionate share being returned to the craft communities.
This pattern repeats across many traditional sectors: design motifs are mined by high-end fashion houses, recontextualized as luxury items, and sold to affluent consumers who do not trace the product to its makers. The result is both cultural misrecognition and an economic structure that deepens inequality: artisans continue to work for subsistence wages while their cultural expressions appear in luxury contexts that confer prestige and profit elsewhere.
International Precedents and limits in Existing Models
Other GI successes suggest routes India could pursue, but also show the limits of name-based protections alone. The Darjeeling tea GI, for example, benefits from clearer international recognition and well-developed enforcement mechanisms that protect the product’s name abroad. Craft-based GIs, however, face harder challenges: designs are easier to replicate, and the global fashion industry frequently operates by remixing motifs into new contexts. Without rapid investigative tools, mutual enforcement agreements, and economic-sharing mechanisms, GIs remain vulnerable where market incentives encourage appropriation.
After the backlash, Prada did send representatives to Kolhapur and expressed openness to dialogue. But such visits are largely symbolic unless backed by binding arrangements - compensation structures, long-term sourcing agreements, or co-branding models that channel economic benefits to artisans. The current system does not compel that kind of outcome; at best, it creates political pressure after reputational damage occurs.
Toward Economic Justice Through IP Reform
The Prada episode shows that name-based IP protections are necessary but not sufficient. To make GI protection meaningful for artisans, structural changes are needed that shift economic gains back toward origin communities. Models from other sectors, such as benefit-sharing arrangements used in bioprospecting, offer one analogy: when commercial entities draw on traditional knowledge, a legally enforceable mechanism ensures that a share of commercial gains returns to the knowledge holders. Applying similar, enforceable frameworks to crafts could require luxury brands to recognize provenance and contractually allocate benefits to artisan groups.
Another change would be to broaden protection beyond the name to include distinctive designs and production techniques. That approach would make it harder for brands to exploit semantic loopholes by renaming products. At the international level, faster cooperative enforcement mechanisms would deter appropriation by raising the cost of infringement. All of these steps, however, depend on political will and institutional capacity, things that are uneven at present.
Conclusion
The Kolhapuri-Prada controversy underlines a deeper problem: current IP systems often privilege institutional rights and market claims over the economic welfare of the people who create traditional knowledge. Unless GI protection is retooled to secure both recognition and a fair share of commercial returns for artisans, similar episodes will reoccur. Symbolic visits and public apologies cannot substitute for enforceable benefit-sharing, design-aware protections, and international enforcement mechanisms that make appropriation commercially unattractive. Until law and policy evolve to close these gaps, the practical outcome of IP protection will remain a promise rather than a reality for many rural artisans.
- Geographical Indications of Goods (Registration and Protection) Act, 1999, No. 48 of 1999, India Code (1999).
- Trade Marks Act, 1999, No. 47 of 1999, India Code (1999), § 2(1)(zb).
- Kolhapuri Chappals, Prada Style: Homage or Cultural Appropriation?, Business Standard, July 4, 2025, https://www.business-standard.com/opinion/columns/kolhapuri-chappals-prada-style-homage-or-cultural-appropriation-125070500009_1.html.
- Prada Finally Admits Kolhapuri Inspiration for Milan Fashion Show Sandals After Backlash, Business Today, June 28, 2025, https://www.businesstoday.in/lifestyle/fashion/story/prada-finally-admits-kolhapuri-inspiration-for-milan-fashion-show-sandals-after-backlash-482294-2025-06-28.
- Controller General of Patents, Designs and Trademarks, GI Application No. 634: Kolhapuri Chappal (July 2, 2019), https://ipindia.gov.in/gi-application-published-in-gi-journal.htm.
- Bombay High Court, PIL Dismissal in Kolhapuri Chappal GI Violation Case Against PRADA, SCC Online Blog (July 19, 2025), https://www.scconline.com/blog/post/2025/07/19/bom-hc-kolhapuri-chappal-gi-violation-prada-dismissed/.
- Export-Import Bank of India, India's Handicrafts Exports: Performance and Prospects 89-95 (2024), https://www.eximbankindia.in/research/occasional-paper/handicrafts-exports-2024.pdf.
- Ministry of Textiles, Government of India, Handicrafts and Handloom Sector Development Report 45-52 (2024), https://texmin.nic.in/reports/handicrafts-development-report-2024.
- Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property, Mar. 20, 1883, as revised July 14, 1967, 21 U.S.T. 1583, 828 U.N.T.S. 305.
- Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, Apr. 15, 1994, 1869 U.N.T.S. 299.