"What the garment signifies is not what it is, but what it permits us to imagine it is."
Nope, it's not a lazy Instagram quote, but a well-etched theory from one of the most important philosophers of all time, Roland Barthes, who is often remembered only for his work in linguistics. Barthes interpreted the garment, and fashion by extension, as a language, and put forth all its essential arbitrariness. Barthes's idea that "Fashion is above all a system of signs" is probably the most useful framework for understanding the current goings-on in the global luxury fashion scene.
Let's not waste breath or bites any further on Prada and Dior 'stealing' from the Indian artisanal traditions: the Kolhapuri footwear and the Muqaish embroidery. Given the asymmetries between the Global North and South, certain exploitative practices are par for the course. Power shirks accountability. Using Barthes, however, one can understand how fashion can become a tool to counteract hegemonic systems built on exploitation. Just like the coloniser's language, English, became a tool for Indian writers to counter intellectual colonialism, the ongoing White Man's Burden.
Cultural appropriation is nothing new in a world divided between the oppressor and the oppressed. From Aztec prints to Amazonian jewellery, Javanese batik to Odisha's warp and weft Ikat and Persian gara embroidery to Han women's mamianqun, economically and hegemonically powerful designers have appropriated them all without even blinking. The paradoxical benefit of such appropriation is that the lack of acknowledgement immediately catches the discerning eye and initiates a conversation. The very brazenness of such an endeavour becomes its undoing.
What is worse, however, is something that recently flew under the radar, thanks to the brouhaha over Dior and Prada. When indigenous traditions are cherry-picked and made into the mainstay of a luxury collection, it engenders another problem: the aesthetic strawman. Faced with the sheer incongruity and ugliness, the indigenous aesthete may wonder, Is this ALL you could find from our traditions, dear designer?
Let's discuss Louis Vuitton's latest India-inspired show, exhibiting the spring-summer 2026 men's collection. The luxury house's website announces proudly, "Louis Vuitton Men's Creative Director Pharrell Williams drew inspiration from India and its global influence on clothing for this season's collection". Grateful for the acknowledgement, but what is all that bejewelled fetishism? Those trunks and handbags, those jackets and hoodies? Rather than being an inspiration, doesn't the collection work more as a pastiche? India's mammoth artisan diversity routinely gets represented by its most garish products.
Less than a year ago, Christian Louboutin launched a similar India-inspired collection where all things gold and glittery seemed to have been slapped together. The ubiquitous Louboutins, those coveted red-soled shoes, are among the most uncomfortable footwear a modern woman can jostle her feet into. The brand prioritises aesthetics over comfort and has been responsible for many style revolutions. Many of their designs are a sight for sore eyes, even though they kill the wearer's toes. So, what happened with that India collection?
This is where Barthes comes in handy. Think of a tourist coming to a town trying to absorb new sights and sounds. An enterprising local becomes their aide and teaches them all the cusswords and slangs. While the tourist may become street-smart under such tutelage, they usually do not mistake this rudimentary linguistic proficiency for language. A namaste here and a gaali there doesn't make a language. The world of fashion, however, has no compunctions in believing that it does. Because what is hurriedly processed and produced is, often, also promptly consumed. In a world swept by "logomania", the brand becomes its own aesthetic. If one doesn't pay attention, this aesthetic surreptitiously corrupts our sensibilities.
Barthes explained this phenomenon through his formulation of real clothing, image clothing, and written clothing. The fashion industry cannot sell real clothing (the tangible product) on its own; it has to be accompanied by image clothing (highly stylized, idealized, and often impossible to achieve in real life visual images of the said product), and written clothing (an evocatively crafted story to turn the product into an object of desire and identity). Fashion, often, becomes a con job where the ordinariness of the real is packaged in manufactured meanings.
These manufactured meanings become more important than the real product, and that's what sets the ball of appropriation-stealthy or acknowledged-rolling. As sociologist Dick Hebdige says in his study of style, "Objects are appropriated, 'bricolaged', and made to carry meanings which they did not originally possess."
Until the objects per se are paid due attention, this cycle will continue.
(Nishtha Gautam is a Delhi-based author and academic)
Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author
