Prada Wears Kolhapuri

IT WAS SOMETIME around the years 2012 and 2013, when Dileep More, then an assistant professor at the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta (IIM-C), was mentoring a few groups on entrepreneurship that the experience sparked an entrepreneurial idea of his own. More, who had spent over a decade in academia by then—acquiring an MTech degree at the Indian Institute of Technology in Dhanbad, followed by a PhD at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, before he began working at IIM-C—hails from Kolhapur in Maharashtra, where his family had for generations been involved in the business of making the city’s famed Kolhapuri chappals. More’s grandfather used to make them, and his father too, although at one point his father had also opened a kirana store. More’s father had pushed him to pursue education, and the new careers that would open up from there, but More had now returned to his old family trade.

“I knew the challenges very well. I also knew that there was huge potential,” More says. “But more than anything, when I start­ed, I wanted to preserve the heritage of the Kolhapuri sandals, ensure fairer wages to the craftsmen, and bring a sense of pride in the work they [the craftsmen] were doing.”

Working with over 100 craftsmen, and despite the many challenges, More has since built a successful model crafting Kolhapuri sandals for large brands like Fa­bindia and for private labels that are sold on e-commerce platforms, apart from also starting his own brand Korakari, a lot of which is sold directly online. The craftsmen who work with him also earn well, More says, with each individual (often with fam­ily members helping him) earning around `25,000 monthly.

A few weeks ago when More heard that the Italian luxury fashion house Prada had showcased Kolhapuri sandals on a ramp, he at first felt proud. But when he, like many others involved in the craft in Kol­hapur, realised what had happened, this quickly descended into displeasure. “It was very hurtful,” he says. “They had taken the exact same design of the Kolhapuri sandal. But there was no acknowledgment of its history or where it came from. They called it just ‘leather sandals’.”

More had learnt about this episode as social media in India was exploding with accusations of cultural appropriation and design theft. Prada had sent models down the runway in Milan for its Men’s Spring/ Summer 2026 collection wearing what it called ‘leather sandals’. In design and craft however it looked exactly like the humble Kolhapuri sandals. The outcry on social media was loud and instant, and appeared to have caught Prada off guard. The fashion house acknowledged its mistake, issuing a statement saying that its sandals were “in­spired by traditional Indian footwear made in specific districts in Maharashtra and Karnataka, India”, and it even sent a team to visit the craftsmen in Kolhapur recently. Prada may have not indulged in any illegali­ty, since the purpose of geographical indica­tion (GI) tags, which Kolhapuri sandals also carry, is to forbid the use of the name of the GI-tagged product by others that haven’t been produced in that particular region. But to be seen lifting an entire design from a centuries-old tradition without as much as a credit line recognising its heritage was not something they could afford. The dis­pleasure may have dimmed online, but it continues to simmer in Kolhapur. “When people heard that the Prada team would be visiting, while many were happy, some were worried that they might use the trip to make some more copies,” More says.

The Kolhapuri chappal is believed to have originated sometime around the 12th and 13th centuries, although it was not known by that name. It was predomi­nantly made by—and continues to be made by—the Charmakar caste group (identified more commonly as the Chamar caste in North India). The book Pukka Indi­an: 100 Objects That Define India by the writer Jahnvi Lakhota Nandan, which looks at 100 everyday objects that represent Indian cul­ture and design, mentions that the towns of Kolhapur and neighbouring Miraj are the country’s oldest centres for leather tan­ning and footwear. In its earliest avatars, it is said to have been known by names like Kapashi, Paytaan, Kachkadi, Bakkal­nali, and Pukri, reflecting the villages where they had been crafted. They however had a common style, featuring a T-strap design with a toe loop and a large foot loop fixed by a cord that was hand-stitched. Over time, especially once it received patronage from Chhatrapati Shahu Maharaj, the ruler of Kolhapur, around the early 20th century, the business around the slippers is believed to have flourished in the city.

For all its popularity, the industry around the sandals has been in a free fall for years. There are said to be around 1 lakh artisans engaged in its creation, and most of them work under dismal conditions in the unorganised sector. According to a Mint article, while India exported over `21,000 crore worth of footwear and related goods in the financial year 2024-25, Kolhapuri sandals made up just `1.3 crore of it.

The sandals might carry the name of the city, but a lot of it is now made out­side Kolhapur. The GI tag itself is shared across a swathe of territory, from Kolha­pur, Satara, Sangli and Solapur in Maha­rashtra, to Dharwad, Belgaum, Bagalkot and Bijapur in Karnataka. “When I was growing up, you would hear the constant sound of craftsmen at work. Now, all that is gone,” says More. There are multiple reasons for this. Most of the tanneries that operated in the city have shut down, follow­ing a crackdown on the release of effluents that caused water pollution. The state’s ban on the slaughter of cow, bulls, and oxen that came into effect in 2015 brought further woes. Craftsmen now rely mostly on tan­neries in Tamil Nadu, which use chemical dyes instead of the vegetable dyes Kolha­puri sandals were once famous for, and the supply is often erratic and unreliable.

Making these sandals is also hard and tedious. Craftsmen—and usually the rest of the family also help him—can take sev­eral days to produce a single pair. There is also very little money, with middlemen pocketing much of the profits. Most crafts­men, More says, are caught up in “debt traps”, forever trying to clear their last debts than making any substantial profit. The setting up of many Maharashtra Indus­trial Development Corporation centres in and around Kolhapur over the years have also taken away much of the labour force, which understandably prefers the solidity of a regular salary to the exploitative and poorly paying job of making sandals.

Then there is the issue of Kolhapuri knock-offs, produced at mass scale and sold at cheap rates, that flood our footpaths and e-commerce sites. “If you ask me, that is the number one problem for the industry,” says Bhushan Kamble, a Mumbai-based trader of Kolhapuri sandals, whose family origi­nally hails from Satara, which also carries a long tradition of producing these sandals. “People cannot tell the difference between a real Kolhapuri chappal and something fake. And that has been really killing the industry for years.”

While the industry continues to strug­gle, and many complain of governmental apathy, there are small individual attempts at reviving it. Kamble runs Vhaan, his e-commerce site that exclusively sells Kol­hapuri sandals. These carry content that range from hacks on how to maintain one’s Kolhapuri sandals to explanations on the various types of the sandal. “The whole idea is to build awareness about the sandal, to make consumers understand what is so special about it,” he says. Kamble, whose family has been involved in the business of making and selling the sandals for many generations, used to previously work in the IT sector. Some of his warmest childhood memories, he says, involved weekend journeys to Satara and Kolhapur, where he would encounter people directly associated with the craft. “But the industry has been struggling. That’s why I felt compelled to enter it too,” he says.

The 20-something proprietor of Kol­hapur’s Inga Leather, Shubham Satpute, had similar ideas when he entered this in­dustry. It was Satpute’s great-grandfather who first began making these sandals sometime around 1902. Every generation built upon the achievements of the pre­vious generation, Satpute says, with his grandfather expanding the production to have around five craftsmen working for him, followed by his father expanding their unit to 10 craftsmen. Satpute employs around 40 craftsmen. While he produces run of the mill Kolhapuri sandals, his real interest, he says, is in bringing back older and more complex designs, many of which he showcases and sells in Kolhapur. These sandals that cost upwards of `1,800, often go anywhere between `6,000 and `7,000, and the best of which can sometimes even cost about `50,000, he says, require more skill and work, and are targeted to a clientele that is more appreciative of the sandals. “People, for instance, will pay a lot of money to buy, say, a great leather belt that comes from a certain place and tradition in Italy. That is because of the quality and the work­manship, and because people are aware about the history and quality of the work,” Satpute says. “It’s the same thing with Kolhapuri chappals. Many similarly are aware and value the work that goes into it. But, yes, more awareness needs to be there.”

While individuals in Kolhapur, whose families have long been associated with its craft, try to revive its popularity, outside in the larger metropolitan cities, a number of new fashion startups have emerged that are giving the Kolhapuri sandal a contem­porary spin. There are a number of them that have emerged in recent times, from Fizzy Goblet and Needledust that have added heels and cushioning, and brought out sandals in wide varieties of colours and patterns, to the likes of Chappers, whose new experimental versions have been spotted on the feet of well-known names like Sachin Tendulkar and Raj Thackeray.

Mumbai-based designer Aprajita Toor, whose eponymous brand was among the first to bring out such contemporary versions of the sandal, says her interest in Kolhapuri sandals grew early. Some of her most vivid memories from her childhood are those of watching her mother team the sandals with various outfits. “She would wear a silver one, and then just dress it up with jeans and an oversized shirt. Those are very vivid memories and you don’t even realise how these actually transpire and inspire you into making something,” she says. Toor’s idea when she began develop­ing experimental versions of the sandal was to make the sandal evolve with the times. “When we started, we wanted the design to evolve with the generation,” she says. “We didn’t want it to be just stagnant to flats. We started wedge heels, pencil and block heels. You named it and we have tried it out.” When the news of Prada’s use of the san­dals first broke, Toor did not feel outraged by it. She thinks the brand erred in not acknowledging the sandals’ roots, but she feels that the sandals being showcased on such a large international platform is a mo­ment to be proud of. “My point is nobody felt bad when they went to Janpath or Link­ing Road and bargained to buy that pair of Kolhapurisfor `400. Nobodythoughtabout the craftsman then. But Prada wants to sell it for `1 lakh and now everyone comes alive for the craftsman,” she says.

As much as Prada’s use of the sandals without crediting its origin has trig­gered outrage in Kolhapur, there are also many who hope that the luxury brand’s belated acknowledgment and the news that the outrage triggered might gener­ate more global attention on the san­dals. “It is still early days. And this is the monsoon season, where there is always a lull in the manufacturing and sale of the sandals, but we are already seeing a bit of an increase in orders,” Kamble says. “Perhaps this is the moment when everything will change.”

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