Produced by: Mohsin Shaikh
Credit: Instagram
A ₹500 Kolhapuri chappal reborn at ₹1.25 lakh? It's not leather or labor—it’s illusion. Behind the price tag is a fog of branding, optics, and exoticism with no trace of the artisan who made it.
Credit: Instagram
Prada’s “new” sandal is centuries old—and someone else’s. Global brands silently repackage India’s heritage, slapping a logo where cultural credit should be. The original makers? Left in the dust.
Credit: Instagram
Same leather, same stitch, 200x price hike. The only thing luxury brands stretch more than the material is your wallet. The product hasn’t changed—but the perception has been reengineered.
Traditional Indian artisans pour 15 days into a pair; luxury houses give them no name, no nod. The invisible hands stay invisible as Western fashion parades cultural designs without a whisper of origin.
For the global elite, a Kolhapuri isn’t footwear—it’s a statement. The foot mold is local, but the buyer’s psyche is global, where price tags aren’t about quality, but social ranking.
In Kolhapur, it’s everyday wear. In Milan, it’s an exotic runway oddity. The same shoe becomes a symbol of wealth—once it’s stripped of its roots and polished by foreign approval.
The Prada logo adds ₹1.24 lakh to a chappal. No added comfort, no new technique—just the hypnotic power of Western branding, transforming humble into haute.
Not knock-offs, but knock-downs. When luxury steals without context, heritage is commodified, and a sandal becomes a silent casualty of aesthetic imperialism.
Kolhapuris have a GI tag—India’s stamp of authenticity. But globally, that tag is ignored, as cultural designs are laundered into “original creations” with a luxury sheen.