By Ines Keane
A sandal with no nails in it. That is one of the first things said about the Kolhapuri chappal.
Wikipedia describes these as hand-crafted, braided leather slip-on sandals, locally tanned using vegetable dyes. It says they are traditionally made from buffalo hide and thread, with no nails. It says elaborate pairs can take up to six weeks, while workers make eight to ten simpler pairs a day. We have no source on how those figures were measured, and we are leaving out the prices the article also gives.
The place
Wikipedia says the Kolhapuri chappal received a Geographical Indication tag from the Controller General of Patents, Designs and Trade Marks in July 2019. It lists the protected districts as Kolhapur, Sangli, Satara and Solapur in Maharashtra, and Bagalkot, Belgavi, Dharwad and Bijapur in Karnataka, along the border of the two states. The name points to one city. The GI covers eight districts across two states, which is worth knowing the next time you see the name on a label.
How old is it?
Sources disagree. Onmanorama, a news outlet, describes Kolhapuri slippers as footwear with a heritage dating to the twelfth century. Wikipedia’s article says the Saudagar family started and designed Kolhapuri chappals in 1920. These may be describing different things, such as a long tradition of the form and one family’s design, but we have not found a source that says so. We are reporting both.
What the government’s craft page says
The Office of the Development Commissioner (Handicrafts) says the chappals trace their roots to the thirteenth century under King Bijjala, that villages developed distinct styles such as Kapashi and Paytaan, and that the craft struggled after independence and was revived with help from the Leather Industries Development Corporation of Maharashtra. That is a third date, after the twelfth century and 1920. It says artisans use buffalo hide for soles, goat hide for the upper straps and cowhide, and that the process takes about six weeks. It describes tanning in salt, limestone and herbal solutions, shaping and hardening the footbed, cutting and patterning goatskin straps, stitching with nylon or zari thread, then cream polish and sun-drying. Wikipedia describes the materials more simply, as buffalo hide and thread. The two accounts are not identical, and we are reporting both.
How many people make them?
Again, two figures. Wikipedia says that in 2020 more than 10,000 artisans worked in Kolhapur, producing 600,000 pairs a year, with 30 percent exported. Onmanorama says the Maharashtra Chamber of Commerce represents approximately 3,000 Kolhapuri sandal artisans. A chamber’s membership and a count of all workers are not the same thing, and we have not seen the original data for either.
The Milan row
Onmanorama says that Prada’s Milan men’s spring/summer 2026 show featured braided leather sandals resembling traditional Kolhapuri slippers, and that the unveiling drew criticism from Indian artisans, politicians and media for lacking public acknowledgement of the design’s Indian roots. It says Lorenzo Bertelli, Prada’s head of corporate social responsibility, wrote to the Maharashtra Chamber of Commerce acknowledging that the sandals were inspired by traditional Indian handcrafted footwear with a centuries-old heritage. It says he described the sandals as at an early design stage with uncertain commercialisation, and expressed openness to dialogue with local Indian artisans. Wikipedia adds that the episode prompted a public interest petition in the Bombay High Court.
The same outlet reports mixed reactions. It says some artisans welcomed global attention to their craft, while members of Kolhapur’s royal family expressed frustration about unacknowledged heritage. We have not found any later source on what came of the dialogue, and we are not saying whether any collaboration took place.
A code on the sandal
Business Standard reports that the Leather Industries Development Corporation of Maharashtra introduced QR-coded certification for Kolhapuri chappals in July 2025. It says scanning a code shows details of the craftsperson, production location, district, techniques, materials and GI status. It says the GI was jointly secured by the Maharashtra and Karnataka governments in 2019, and that the craft standards require handmade production with traditional techniques, natural leather and open-toe construction, with synthetic materials and mechanised processes prohibited. It describes the scheme as a response to counterfeiting and, in context, to the Prada episode. We have not seen the scheme in use.
What a GI tag is, and is not
India’s Geographical Indications of Goods Act came into force in 2003, according to Wikipedia. It says the GI restricts use of a protected name to authorised registered users or those within the designated territory. In this case the tag came in 2019. The tag covers use of the name and the area. It does not, on the sources we found, settle every question about a similar-looking design made elsewhere. We are not lawyers, and this is not legal advice.
How to look at a pair
We have not profiled any maker or shop. A few questions apply to any chappal. What is the leather, and how was it tanned? What is the sole made of? Is the braiding by hand, and who did it? Where, in which district, was it made? Does the seller know the difference between the form and the tag? A pair that comes with its maker’s name and place has a story you can check.
A short note on respect
A craft like this has people attached to it, and the row in Milan showed how much they care about being named. If you buy, buy from a source that tells you who made the thing. That is what we try to do at Sephari, and it is why we have not named a shop here: we have not seen one we can source.
Roam first. Shop later.
Maharashtra and Karnataka leather artisans can find out what’s involved at /sell-with-sephari/