Heritage or Trend?
Slicked-back hairstyles, maximalist jewellery,"Scandinavian Scarves”, boho aesthetics — everything online labeled as “ethnic chic”—has one thing in common: it’s all borrowed straight from cultures the West dismissed.
Right now, South Asian fashion seems to be their favourite Pinterest inspo board, yet again being recycled without giving credit where it’s due.
Cultural appropriation of South Asian fashion has exploded in recent years. In 2023, Christian Dior held a show in Mumbai featuring Indian motifs and crafts but hardly acknowledged the artisans whose work made the collection come to life. That same year, Anthropologie sold embroidered kurtis branded as “boho wear”.
Fast-fashion giants like Shein, Zara, Urban Outfitters, ASOS, and Boohoo quickly followed, pushing kurtis, lehenga-style skirts, jewellery, and even teeps (marketed as face stickers).
Zara didn’t stop there they even dropped “modernised lungis”, repackaged as if they had just invented the garment instead of borrowing it from centuries of tradition
By 2024, luxury brands like Gucci and Louis Vuitton were rolling out campaigns featuring “South Asian-inspired” nose rings and embroidery but the only people credited were their own designers for “creative reinterpretation”.
Then in 2025, Reformation, Oh Polly and H&M released blouse-skirt-scarf sets identical to lehengas, yet sold them as Western “festival wear”. Meanwhile, white influencers pushed “Scandinavian scarves”, which South Asians instantly recognised as orna/dupatta.
To top it all off, churis, balas and baju — things our mothers and grandmothers wore daily — were suddenly crowned the new “Y2K trend”, complete with pastel filters, inflated price tags and hashtags praising Western creators for “discovering” them.
But this isn’t random, it’s a continuation of corporate culture and old colonial narratives. Western brands still operate in a system where profit matters more than cultural respect. They strip traditions down to aesthetics that fit their brands, because corporate branding thrives on turning identity into consumable trends.
And the colonial mindset, the idea that Western interpretation automatically improves something “ethnic”, still lingers. When brands rename lehengas as “co-ord festival sets” or lungis as “draped skirts”, it echoes the same historic pattern of taking, renaming and profiting.
The situation gets more complicated when many South Asians themselves jump on these trends, reposting and buying into the Westernised versions as if they’re new .
It’s not intentional — social media trends pressure everyone to fit in — but it ends up hurting us. When we celebrate the Western version granted we have the original ones at home, we reinforce the idea that our culture is only valuable when someone else rebrands it.
So the inevitable question arises, Is our heritage just another aesthetic for the Western world to monetise?
Do these brands (or influencers copying them) understand the centuries of craftsmanship, symbolism and community behind each and every design?
When we value our own cultural styles that are being filtered through Western approval, the issue goes deeper than fashion. It becomes a cycle where colonial thinking, corporate marketing and trends join hand in hand to shrink our identity into seasonal content.
At the end of the day, our culture isn’t a trend — but the world continues to treat it like one — and the more we play into that system, the easier it becomes for others to erase the centuries old heritage.