Created by Myrrah Shapoo and Andrea Khov
The world of fashion has a problem, one that needs to be addressed in an era of progressive values and only increasing cultural awareness: cultural appropriation.
High fashion brands often turn to marginalized cultures and looked down upon communities to turn their clothing into trendy aesthetics and extremely costly pieces for the upper echelons of society.
Frankly, it is time for the communities behind these pieces and aesthetics to be fully acknowledged. For the original functionality and cultural meanings of these things to be recognized and put back into place.
Appropriative: Prada's "Made in India" Sandals
This object asks: when does “inspiration” become extraction? Prada’s sandal demonstrates how luxury fashion can detach a craft from the hands that sustain it. The Kolhapuri chappal becomes desirable only after it is filtered through a European luxury house, while the original artisan is pushed into the background. What was once local, functional, and culturally embedded is reframed as exotic minimalism. The sandal becomes status. The maker becomes invisible.
Authentic: Kolhapuri chappals
Kolhapuri chappals are not simply “open-toe leather sandals.” They are a centuries-old Indian footwear tradition tied to regional craft, hand-braiding, leatherwork, and local artisan economies. In 2025, Prada presented sandals that closely resembled Kolhapuri chappals without initially naming the Indian craft source, provoking criticism from artisans and Indian trade groups. The issue was not just visual similarity. It was the transformation of an everyday cultural object, often sold affordably in India, into a luxury object priced for global elite consumption. Prada later acknowledged the sandals were inspired by traditional Indian handcrafted footwear and opened discussions with representatives of Kolhapuri artisans.
Appropriative: Kendra Scott x Wrangler 2024
“The Odessa Vintage Gold Statement Necklace in Variegated Turquoise Magnesite is here to let you have your cowgirl moment. A celebration of the bold designs of the West…This necklace is a part of Yellow Rose by Kendra Scott—a brand that celebrates ranch life…”
Priced at $550, but not made out of real turquoise, rather turquoise magnesite.
Beyond ignoring traditional Indigenous symbolism of turquoise, the usage of the mineral in non-Native American brands meant to imbue the "cowgirl"/"cowboy" aesthetic of the West or the Southwest is problematic as it drives attention away from Native-owned brands and sellers.
Turquoise began being used in a variety of Southwest Native American cultures' (Zuni, Hopi, Pueblo, Navajo, etc.) jewelry after they began to live sedentary lifestyles.
This is due to the connotations made in these cultures between the mineral and things such as water and the sky, both integral to the formation of rain. Rain, something important to crop cultivation in the dry climate of the Southwestern United States.
For the Pueblo, it was used as a sort of prayer for the arrival of rain, for the aforementioned reasons. For the Navajo, however, it was used as a symbol of health and protection.
Pictured above is a turquoise necklace made by Navajo artisan Garrison Boyd from the Native American jewelry website Alltribes.
Authentic: Southwestern Native American Turquoise Jewelry
Appropriative: Louis Vuitton Spring/Summer 2011 collection
Marc Jacob's Spring/Summer 2011 collection for Louis Vuitton was meant to embody both Susan Sontag's notion of 'camp' and the aesthetics of Old Shanghai with bold, bright colors and overdone patterns intertwined with Chinese-inspired designs.
Quotes by Suzy Menkes for The New York Times convey the mood that the collection was attempting to divulge:
"...you didn’t need a master’s in Mandarin to get the message that China is hot retail property for Louis Vuitton."
"...there were mauves, orange and pink mixed with bold orchid prints. The effect was as racy as a night out on the Shanghai Bund before the Cultural Revolution."
"By next year the 2010 Year of the Tiger will be just a memory but, for Louis Vuitton and its Asian conquests, the brand is always one leap ahead."
The deformation of the qipao/cheongsam by Western high fashion brands into something highly sexualized (more so than it was intended) can be seen as related to the sexualization of Asian women as a whole. This can be seen in the way journalists such as Menkes describe the collection, using words such as 'racy' or 'conquests.'
Authentic: Qipao or cheongsam
The qipao, or in Cantonese the cheongsam, is a dress made by designers in China in the 1920s. It was inspired by both traditional Manchurian dress as well as the style of flappers in the West at the time, making the item of clothing Westernized already.
Despite its primary function being what it provides to the wearer in terms of style, it does carry deeper connotations directly related to its Chinese origins:
A symbol of the liberation and sexual freedom of Chinese women represented by the tighter silhouette and lessened layers (as compared to the style of Chinese women's clothing pre-1920s).
A symbol of Chinese ethnic heritage related to the characteristics of the dress itself, such as the knot buttons and the standing Mandarin collar.
Philosophical connotations with the right-hand slit at the end of the dress. In the yin-yang, the right is represented by yang while the left is represented by yin.
More philosophical connotations in the patterns (which typically have auspicious meaning to them) and the colors (which have good and bad fortunes associated with them).
Appropriative: (highly contextually dependent) Michael and Hushi's keffiyeh dress/top
Michael & Hushi, a fashion brand created by the American and Iranian designers Michael Sears and Hushidar Mortezai, utilize the same pattern that is on the keffiyeh in multiple pieces, such as a tank top and a dress.
The usage of the keffiyeh within the brand's collections is not necessarily problematic or appropriative. It is all dependent on the person wearing it, and less on the brand for using it especially since they intended on it conveying a political message in post-9/11 United States.
For instance, the tank top by Michael & Hushi is worn in the television show Sex and the City by the main character Carrie Bradshaw. This could be considered appropriative on the part of the show as there is no attempt to acknowledge Palestinian suffering or resistance or Palestine in general. Why use something so symbolic if not once in the show's run there is any mention of the country it is symbolic of?
On the opposite end of the spectrum, there is their keffiyeh dress worn by supermodel Bella Hadid, who is herself half-Palestinian, at the Cannes Film Festival. This is not appropriative due to Hadid's background but also because she is just generally vocal about Palestine and Palestinian struggles. The keffiyeh, besides being used as an ethnic symbol, is not just worn as a fashion accessory but a political statement, as intended by the brand and as supported by Palestinians themselves.
The keffiyeh is a symbol of Palestinian identity born out of the scarf used by farmers in the region to keep the sun and dust off one's face while tending to the olive groves.
Around the 1930s, the usage changed from purely utilitarian to symbolic of Palestinian ethnicity, specifically in relation to the black and white keffiyeh as promoted by Yasser Arafat, a notable Palestinian political leader.
It became a motif within everyday life in Palestine and in Palestinian art. It also became a sign with humanistic and political connotations, as wearing it shows that you may be aligned with the Palestinian struggle and resistance against the Israeli occupation.
Authentic: Palestinian keffiyeh
The cooptation of the keffiyeh, specifically the black and white rendition, by the fashion industry is complex.
Wearing the pattern as someone who is non-Palestinian is not a necessarily bad thing, as many Palestinians view wearing it as a sign that you stand with them against colonial forces. This could very well be so with historical, cultural, and political knowledge of the scarf.
However, it could also very well be appropriative if it is worn solely as a fashionable piece and without any care for Palestine or the struggle of Palestinians.
The high fashion industry utilizes both casual and traditional Romani aesthetics to convey a 'free-spirited' or 'mystical' vibe that is then repackaged as 'Bohemian' or 'g*psy' (a slur for the Roma), with the latter being the closest to acknowledging the heritage of the style while also remaining an extremely offensive acknowledgement simultaneously.
This is problematic as it perpetuates harmful stereotypes about the Roma that 'justify' their marginalization--that they are a magical group that are permanently out of the bounds of 'normal' society and do not follow rules or laws. This is especially prevalent within high fashion designed for women in this aesthetic arena.
Appropriative: the Bohemian or g*psy aesthetic
Ruffles, colors, maximalism, patterns--the high fashion industry turns cultural meaning and practicality into a symbol of free-spirited nomadism, non-conformism, and spirituality. These are the very things the Roma are actually persecuted and marginalized for--how is it fair for the fashion industry to profit off of it?
Authentic: Romani cultural and casual dress
The casual and traditional styles of the Roma vary from each Romani community, but the style they are traditionally associated with--colorful, pattern-filled, and maximalist--carries much cultural significance.
The Roma consider the lower half of the body to be impure so they try to keep it covered consistently, and this can be seen in women wearing the long and colorful skirts often used in high fashion appropriation of Romani culture.
The colors worn by the Roma are associated with mood and often have age-associations, for example girls over fifteen wear dark red while women over twenty-five wear green/light purple/white. No matter what age, black is avoided (unless as funerals) as it is a symbol of pain and unhappiness.
Another aspect of color that may be noticeable in Romani clothing, and thus its appropriative counterpart, is that it does not match. This is purposeful and the goal is often to wear as many colors as possible. These colors often reflect, besides mood, the aesthetics of one's clan or certain symbols of spiritual protection.
The Roma often wear a lot of jewelry, but one piece that is prevalent is jewelry using gold coins. Historically, coins were worn because the Roma, often outcast from society in Europe and the United States, were not allowed to put their money in banks, so they had to keep it on them.
Appropriative: the "Geisha" aesthetic within Christian Dior's Spring/Summer 2007 collection
For Christian Dior's spring/summer collection in 2007, designer John Galliano created a set of clothing heavily inspired by Japanese aesthetics, especially those of geishas.
"The cherry blossom delicacy, the blizzard of confetti butterflies and the gamut of glamour from geisha to Christian Dior's New Look gave lift off to the haute couture spring/summer season."
" Colors and patterns used kimonos as the creative source, but on outfits that were often beguilingly slender and approachable."
The appropriation of the clothing and makeup styles of geishas trivializes the hard work required to reach the level of an actual geisha. It treats the profession with surface-level care, something utilized solely for its aesthetics but not acknowledged for its cultivated practices or the craftsmanship involved.
Authentic: Geishas and their style within Japanese culture
Geishas are hostesses (a more complex term would be more appropriate but in English it is the most fitting) within Japanese culture who are trained to provide good company and light-hearted entertainment (dance, conversation, musical performance, etc.) for their customers, usually but not exclusively male. Because of this there is a misconception that they are sex workers, but this is not true.
The word 'geisha' is made up of the characters 'gei' and 'sha,' standing for 'art' and 'person' respectively. It represents a life path dedicated to the cultivation of their art form that requires great dedication and patience.
Their distinctive white makeup, kimonos, and intricate hairdos represent that they are people who have chosen this artistic path and have dedicated themselves to accomplishing all of the markers of geisha-hood.
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Appropriative: Cartier Toussaint Necklace
The original Nawanagar necklace was designed by Jacques Cartier in 1931 for Maharaja Sir Ranjitsinhji of Nawanagar. It was one of the most famous high-jewelry works associated with Indian princely patronage, featuring extraordinary colored diamonds, including the Queen of Holland diamond. The original necklace no longer exists in its original form; it was dismantled, and Cartier later recreated a version for Ocean’s 8, where it was worn by Anne Hathaway’s fictional character at the Met Gala. In the film and much of the popular coverage, the piece is usually remembered as the “Toussaint Necklace,” named after Cartier’s creative director Jeanne Toussaint, rather than foregrounding Nawanagar as its royal and cultural origin.
Authentic: The Nawanagar Diamond Necklace
This necklace reveals how luxury archives can rename history. A jewel commissioned for an Indian ruler becomes absorbed into the mythology of a European maison. Its Indian princely context is replaced by Cartier’s authorship, Hollywood spectacle, and red-carpet fantasy. The object is not only physically dismantled; its identity is also dismantled. Nawanagar becomes a footnote. Cartier becomes the story.
Look Closely:
The necklace’s afterlife shows how cultural objects can be separated from their original political and geographic worlds, then reintroduced as “timeless glamour” for Western spectators.
Appropriative: Free People's Madras That Linen
Madras is often seen as cheerful, coastal, preppy, or “boho.” But before it became an aesthetic of leisure, it was a textile rooted in South Indian production and colonial movement. Its transformation into a whitewashed summer staple reveals how fashion can flatten textile history. The pattern is remembered as vacationwear, not as evidence of Indian craft, colonial trade, and global circulation.
Authentic: Madras Check
Madras cloth takes its name from the former colonial name of Chennai. It is a lightweight cotton textile associated with handwoven production, vegetable dyes, and regional Indian textile histories. Through colonial trade, the fabric traveled globally and later became strongly associated with American prep, Ivy League fashion, Caribbean style, and summer leisurewear. Fashion and Race Database describes Madras as Indian in origin but globally hybrid, especially after its absorption into American sportswear and preppy style.
Look Closely:
The check is not just a pattern. It is a map: Chennai to colonial ports, Caribbean plantations, Ivy League campuses, and modern resort wardrobes.
Authentic: Regalia/Buckskin
Appropriative: "Boho Chic" festival wear
Fringe is not just movement. In many Plains and Plateau traditions, it is part of clothing that carries memory, family, dance, and identity. On buckskin dresses and powwow regalia, fringe moves with the body; it makes the dancer’s steps visible. It can signal tradition, skill, belonging, and continuity.
But in festival fashion, fringe is often detached from all of that. It becomes “boho,” “free-spirited,” or “desert girl” styling. The Native body disappears, but the aesthetic remains. The result is a fantasy of Indigenous freedom created by a culture that has historically restricted Indigenous freedom.
Fringe in Native clothing is especially associated with many Plains and Plateau traditions, including Lakota, Cheyenne, Blackfeet, Crow, Kiowa, Comanche, Nez Perce, and others. On buckskin dresses, shirts, leggings, shawls, and powwow regalia, fringe is not random decoration. It moves with the dancer, marks the body’s rhythm, and carries family, community, and cultural meaning. Festival fashion strips that meaning away, turning regalia into “boho” costume.
Look Closely:
Ask what happens when sacred, ceremonial, or community-specific symbols are turned into disposable weekend outfits.
Appropriative: Dune/Desert Chic
The headscarf or veil becomes acceptable when it is aestheticized on white or Western bodies, but stigmatized when worn by Muslim, Middle Eastern, North African, Amazigh, or Central Asian women in real life. This is the Orientalist contradiction: the West desires the look while disciplining the people attached to it. “Desert chic” turns living cultural garments into atmosphere.
Authentic: Amazigh and MENA head covering traditions
The design language here includes wrapped scarves, veiled faces, desert robes, layered draping, sand-colored palettes, heavy hoods, loose silhouettes, and face-framing fabric. These choices are often used in fashion and film to signal mystery, spirituality, danger, or ancient wisdom. In movies like Dune, costumes have been read through Islamic, Middle Eastern, and North African influences, while critics have also pointed to the lack of MENA representation in major roles. Variety reported criticism of Dune: Part Two for drawing on MENA and Islamic cultural influences while largely excluding MENA performers from central representation. (Variety)
Look Closely:
What is presented as “futuristic” often relies on very old racial and colonial fantasies.
Appropriative: Desert Futurism
The design takes garments associated with real peoples and makes them look “otherworldly.” That is the political move. When a robe, veil, or wrapped silhouette is worn by a real Middle Eastern or North African person, it may be read through suspicion, backwardness, or oppression. When the same silhouette appears in luxury fashion or sci-fi costuming, it becomes avant-garde. The design is not just borrowing clothing; it is borrowing distance. It turns real cultures into imagined planets.
Authentic: Amazigh, Bedouin, and MENA silhouettes
This design language relies on monastic robes, wrapped bodies, sculptural draping, earth tones, oversized hoods, layered tunics, and covered faces. These choices often appear in high fashion and science fiction as signs of the alien, the futuristic, or the apocalyptic. But many of these shapes echo real clothing traditions from North Africa, the Middle East, Amazigh communities, Bedouin cultures, and Islamic dress histories.
Look Closely:
When a garment is removed from its cultural source, it becomes easier to call it “universal,” “alien,” or “timeless.”
Authentic: Actual Workwear
Appropriative: "Heritage Workwear"
The garment performs hardship without experiencing it. A torn jacket becomes edgy when it is expensive, but shameful when worn by someone poor. A paint-splattered pant becomes “authentic” on a runway, but evidence of manual labor on a worker. This is the central violence of poverty aesthetics: it extracts the look of struggle while avoiding the conditions that created it.
Workwear is built around utility: heavy canvas, reinforced seams, rivets, oversized pockets, double knees, duck cloth, chore coats, overalls, faded denim, and abrasion-resistant fabric. Carhartt’s own history emphasizes that the company began in 1889 and developed clothing for workers, especially railroad workers, based on durability and function. (Carhartt)
Distressed luxury fashion borrows these same signs: frayed hems, stains, rips, fading, oversized fits, worn knees, and patched surfaces. But the meaning changes. In working-class life, distress is produced by labor, low income, repeated wear, and necessity. In luxury fashion, distress is simulated and sold.
Look Closely:
A ripped jacket means something different when it is produced by hardship than when it is purchased as luxury.
Appropriative: Homeless "Swag"
The look borrows from homelessness while removing the actual unhoused person. It turns precarity into a silhouette. The luxury consumer gets to wear the visual codes of survival while remaining protected by wealth. This is why the aesthetic feels especially violent: it converts social abandonment into visual edge.
Authentic: Clothing of Necessity
This aesthetic uses oversized layering, dirty-looking fabrics, holes, raw hems, mismatched garments, heavy boots, sagging shapes, blanket-like coats, and intentionally worn-out textures. The body is styled to look displaced, weathered, or economically unstable, but in a controlled editorial way. It is poverty made photogenic.
Look Closely:
The runway can sell homelessness because it never has to sleep outside.
Appropriative: Hypebeast Fashion
Luxury fashion often takes the silhouette while removing the surveillance. Baggy jeans, durags, chains, jerseys, and grills are read as criminal, excessive, or “ghetto” on Black bodies, but become edgy or stylish on celebrities, influencers, and runway models. The design does not simply travel upward into luxury. It is sanitized. Its Blackness is softened, renamed, and made profitable.
Authentic: Hip Hop/African American street style
Streetwear’s design codes include oversized jerseys, baggy denim, sneakers, bandanas, durags, chains, grills, varsity jackets, logo-heavy pieces, sportswear, and zoot suit references. These are not isolated trends. They emerge from Black American style, hip-hop, basketball, jazz, nightlife, barbershop culture, neighborhood identity, and survival under racial surveillance.
The zoot suit is especially important. The National WWII Museum notes that the zoot suit was popularized by Black performers like Cab Calloway and Lionel Hampton before spreading across youth cultures. During the 1943 Zoot Suit Riots, young Mexican American, Filipino American, and Black men were attacked, and their clothing was stripped from their bodies. JSTOR Daily describes the riots as race riots, noting that white servicemen assaulted young people of color wearing zoot suits while white zoot-suiters were not targeted in the same way.
Look Closely:
The question is not just “who wore it first?” It is: who was punished for wearing it before it became profitable?
Appropriative: Urban Acessories
When these objects enter luxury fashion, they are often detached from the conditions that made them meaningful. A durag becomes a runway styling choice. A grill becomes a celebrity accessory. A chain becomes an editorial prop. But the Black people who shaped these styles have historically been mocked, policed, or criminalized for the same visual codes.
Authentic: Black hair and style
The durag is tied to Black hair care, wave culture, protection, and grooming practices. Bandanas have histories across many communities, but in streetwear they also carry associations with hip-hop, gang policing, and racialized urban style. Chains and grills are linked to hip-hop’s visual language of wealth, survival, self-making, and spectacle.
Look Closely:
Luxury does not invent the style. It changes who is allowed to wear it without punishment.
Appropriative:Ibiza Skirts
The skirt converts a specific Indian craft into a vague fantasy of nomadic femininity. The mirrors and beads are treated as sparkle rather than language. The embroidery is valued as decoration, not as community knowledge. Once renamed as Ibiza or festival wear, the garment no longer has to answer to the artisan, the region, or the cultural system that produced it.
Authentic: Indian Mirror work
Indian mirror work, or shisha/abhala bharat embroidery, involves attaching small mirrors to fabric with embroidery stitches. It is especially associated with regions like Gujarat and Rajasthan. Vogue India describes mirror work as a hand embroidery technique using small pieces of mirror, and notes its continuing place in Indian fashion and craft. Other textile sources connect shisha embroidery to arid regions of India, including Gujarat, Rajasthan, Haryana, and Delhi.
The “Ibiza skirt” or festival skirt often borrows mirror discs, dense beadwork, coins, tassels, shells, embroidery, patchwork, and bright color. These details are then renamed as “bohemian,” “tribal,” “festival,” or “global traveller.”
Look Closely:
Every mirror, shell, bead, and stitch can carry regional identity. “Boho” is often what fashion says when it does not want to say where something came from.