INTRODUCTION
The global fashion landscape is frequently punctuated by trends that are, in reality, centuries-old traditions repackaged for elite consumption. In June 2025, the French luxury house Dior showcased a gold and ivory coat featuring “Mukaish”, which is an intricate metal embroidery technique from Lucknow, priced at approximately ₹1.67 crore or $200,000. While twelve Indian artisans worked meticulously for thirty-four days to finish this single garment, the showcase initially lacked any acknowledgement of the Indian origins of the craft or the specific artisans involved.
This follows a similar controversy where Prada marketed sandals clearly resembling the “Kolhapuri Chappal” without initial attribution, only later adding that the design was inspired by Indian footwear after facing significant public backlash.[1] These instances reflect a growing trend where traditional designs, textiles, and crafts are rebranded, commercialised, and systematically detached from their original communities.
The core issue is not the cross-cultural exchange of ideas, but rather the asymmetrical distribution of benefits and the erasure of the origin communities that have preserved these crafts for generations. While global fashion borrows heavily from Indian traditions, existing intellectual property laws fail to adequately protect community-owned cultural heritage, allowing unchecked rebranding without accountability.[2]
CONCEPTUALISING CULTURAL REBRANDING AND APPROPRIATION
Navigating the ethics of modern fashion requires a clear distinction between healthy cultural exchange and exploitative practice. Cultural exchange or appreciation is rooted in understanding, honour, and celebration. It often involves collaborative efforts where the source community is credited and fairly compensated, such as the partnership between Christian Louboutin and Sabyasachi.[3] Conversely, cultural appropriation occurs when a dominant group adopts elements from a marginalised culture without permission, understanding, or respect, often reducing sacred traditions to mere aesthetic novelties.[4]
Rebranding represents the commercial transformation of this traditional knowledge. It involves stripping a cultural element of its historical and spiritual context to market it under Westernised or generic labels. This process often results in a collective global amnesia regarding the origins of these items. For example, the globally popular bandana traces its etymology and design to the Hindi word ‘Bandhnu’, yet there is almost no recognition of its Indian provenance.
Similarly, sacred symbols like the bindi are rebranded as forehead jewellery, and the Sikh dastar is marketed as a bohemian fashion accessory, trivialising their spiritual significance. Even traditional wellness practices suffer this fate; turmeric milk is repackaged in Western cafes as golden milk or detox drinks at inflated prices without credit to the Ayurvedic traditions of India.
THE ARTISANS’ PERSPECTIVE: INVISIBLE LABOUR AND ECONOMIC EXPLOITATION
Traditional crafts are inherently labour-intensive and community-based, yet the artisans who are the backbone of these traditions rarely share in the prestige. Cultural appropriation is, therefore, not just an aesthetic grievance but a form of economic exploitation of labour. [5]The Dior Mukaish coat serves as a stark example of this disparity, where thirty-four days of artisan labour resulted in a $200,000 product with zero initial credit to the creators.
The artisan sector in India operates largely within the informal economy, characterised by a lack of labour protection and benefit-sharing mechanisms.[6] When a global brand borrows a design without credit, it alienates the artisan from the commercial success of their own work.
By mass-producing imitations through mechanisation, global labels displace authentic handmade products, pushing traditional craftsmen further into socio-economic marginalisation. This exploitation is twofold: at an economic level, it leads to a loss of income for communities whose livelihoods depend on these expressions, and at a cultural level, it deprives them of agency over their own heritage. Protecting tradition must involve protecting the worker, ensuring that those who create culture are not economically erased by its commercial success.[7]
THE INADEQUACY OF THE CURRENT LEGAL FRAMEWORK
Existing legal structures are fundamentally ill suited to address the communal and intergenerational nature of traditional heritage.
The Geographical Indications of Goods Registration and Protection Act 1999 is the primary tool for identifying the origin of goods like Pochampally Ikat or Banaras Zardozi.[8] While GI tags link a product to a specific region, they suffer from strict territorial limitations. A GI tag registered in India offers limited protection against a brand in Europe using near-identical designs under a different name. Furthermore, GI protection is often static and fails to prevent the international exploitation of underlying motifs or designs that can be detached and misused elsewhere.
The Trade Marks Act 1999 facilitates the corporatisation of culture. While it allows for collective marks, the law primarily addresses commercial deception rather than cultural integrity. This enables the misbranding of traditional names, such as “Navajo” or “Kolhapuri”, where a brand may use a culturally significant name to signal “exotic” authenticity without respecting its provenance.[9]
Copyright law fails to protect traditional knowledge because it is built on Western conceptions of individual authorship and originality. The Copyright Act 1957 requires an identifiable author and the fixation of a work in a tangible medium, conditions that oral and performative folklore traditions rarely meet. Traditional designs are collectively authored, passed down through oral traditions, and evolve over generations, making them public domain under standard copyright doctrine.[10] Furthermore, the Designs Act 2000 offers protection for only fifteen years, a timeframe wholly incompatible with cultural designs that hold enduring social and spiritual significance.
A defining feature of Indian fashion law is the copyright-design divide. As established in Ritika Pvt Ltd v Biba Apparels Pvt Ltd, garments produced on a commercial scale cannot claim copyright protection and must instead rely on registration under design law. [11]Similarly, in Microfibres Inc v Girdhar and Co, the court clarified that fabric patterns, once applied industrially, fall within the ambit of design law rather than copyright. [12]This transition effectively extinguishes copyright once a design is industrially reproduced beyond a statutory threshold, leaving unregistered traditional designs vulnerable to widespread copying.
INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVES AND THE STRUCTURAL GAP
The inability of intellectual property law to safeguard tradition stems from a deeper structural gap. IP law is designed to incentivise individual innovation through private rights and time-bound monopolies. In contrast, cultural heritage is built on collective ownership and perpetual custodianship. Without a legal bridge that recognises communal rights, the public domain serves as a doctrinal construct that facilitates the extraction of cultural value without reciprocity.
The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) have spent decades discussing the protection of Traditional Cultural Expressions or TCEs. These frameworks emphasise community moral rights, the need for prior informed consent, and equitable benefit sharing. [13]However, there is currently no binding international treaty that mandates these protections, leaving Indian heritage as a resource that brands can appropriate at will.
THE PATH TOWARD CULTURAL JUSTICE
To move from appropriation toward cultural justice, India must implement specific reforms that go beyond market-centric paradigms:
- Sui Generis Legislation: India should adopt a specialised legal framework that recognises collective community ownership and offers perpetual protection for TCEs.
- Biological Diversity Act Model: Future legislation should integrate benefit sharing mechanisms similar to those in the Biological Diversity Act 2002, ensuring that profits from culturally derived products flow back to origin communities.
- Mandatory Attribution and Consent: Legal requirements should mandate that commercial entities seek prior informed consent and disclose the cultural sources of their designs.
- Digital Documentation: Expanding the Traditional Knowledge Digital Library to include textile designs and embroidery patterns could help prevent misappropriation by proving provenance in court.
CONCLUSION
The current legal landscape is fundamentally outdated for protecting the living heritage of Indian communities. The issue is not the sharing of culture but rather the unjust enrichment and invisibilisation of those who sustain it. As global fashion increasingly draws from diverse traditions, the law must evolve to ensure that creativity does not come at the expense of community rights and artisan dignity. Protecting tradition is not about resisting globalisation but ensuring that those who create culture are not erased from it.
Author(s) Name: Shraddha Dongare (Maharashtra National Law University, Nagpur)
References:
[1] Parth Sharma et al., ‘Protection of Tribal Cultural Expressions from Misappropriation by the Fashion & Entertainment Industries’ (2026) 16(33S) International Journal of Drug Delivery Technology 247 <https://impactfactor.org/PDF/IJDDT/16/IJDDT,Vol16,Issue33s,Article31.pdf> accessed 01 May 2026
[2] Shefali Sikandar and Ashima Sikandar, ‘From tradition to exploitation – How the global lack of tce protection hits India hard: A case study of well-known global fashion brands’ (2026) 12(1) International Journal of Law 544 <https://lawjournals.org/assets/archives/2026/vol12issue1/12103.pdf> accessed 01 May 2026
[3] Christian Louboutin SAS v Nakul Bajaj and Ors (2018) 253 DLT 728
[4] Navajo Nation v Urban Outfitters Inc [2016] WL 5339684
[5] Indian Performing Rights Society v Eastern India Motion Pictures Association (1977) 2 SCC 820
[6] Geographical Indications of Goods (Registration and Protection) Act 1999
[7] Amar Nath Sehgal v Union of India (2005) 30 PTC 253 (Del)
[8] Geographical Indications of Goods (Registration and Protection) Act 1999
[9] Trade Marks Act 1999
[10] Copyright Act 1957
[11] Ritika Pvt Ltd v Biba Apparels Pvt Ltd (2016) 230 DLT 109
[12] Microfibres Inc v Girdhar and Co and Anr (2009) SCC OnLine Del 1647
[13] ‘Indigenous Peoples and Fashion’ (World Intellectual Property Organization) <https://www.wipo.int/en/web/traditional-knowledge/fashion> accessed 01 May 2026