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Kolhapuri Chappal: The Leather Sandal of Kolhapur

Stiff at first, soft with wear, and made entirely by hand: the Kolhapuri chappal has walked out of Maharashtra for eight centuries.

The Kolhapuri chappal is a flat leather sandal with an open toe, a T-shaped strap and a braided thong, and it is one of the most recognisable pieces of footwear in India. It is also one of the most imitated. The real thing is made by hand from vegetable-tanned leather, cut, stitched and hammered by artisans in Kolhapur and the surrounding districts of Maharashtra and Karnataka, and it behaves like handmade leather always behaves: it is stiff when new, it softens and moulds to the foot with wear, and it lasts for years rather than seasons.

History and origins

The Kolhapuri chappal is traced to the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and its making has long been the work of the Chamar community, leather workers whose skills passed from one generation to the next. Its great turning point came under Chhatrapati Shahu Maharaj, who ruled Kolhapur from 1894 to 1922. Shahu encouraged the leather industry of his princely state, and twenty-nine tanning centres were opened during his reign. The village of Kapshi, near Kolhapur, gave its name to the Kapshi style, the pointed form that remains the classic Kolhapuri shape.

From Kolhapur the chappal spread across the Deccan, carried by traders and worn by everyone from farmers to film stars, and its production spread too, across the border into the districts of northern Karnataka that had once been part of the Maratha empire. The craft never industrialised. Even as factories began making lookalike sandals, the workshops of Kolhapur kept cutting, stitching and braiding by hand, and the chappal became a point of pride for the city, a thing visitors were expected to buy and take home.

Materials

A Kolhapuri chappal is made from vegetable-tanned leather, traditionally buffalo hide for the sole and upper, with goat leather used for finer work. The hides are tanned with plant materials, traditionally babul bark and myrobalan among them, a slow process that leaves the leather firm, dense and free of the chemicals used in chrome tanning. The result is leather that is stiff at first and softens with use, and that darkens and burnishes rather than cracking. The other materials are simple: cotton thread for the stitching, natural dyes for colour, and oil for finishing. No nails, no moulded plastic: the chappal is leather, thread and skill.

Technique and process

Making a Kolhapuri chappal is a sequence of hand operations. It begins at the tannery, where the hide is processed into firm, vegetable-tanned leather. The artisan then marks out the shape of the chappal on the leather using stencils, and cuts the sole, the upper and the straps. The pieces are thinned where they must fold, a step called skiving, then pasted and stitched together. The stitching is the heart of the craft: the sole and footbed are bound with thread or leather thong in a loose stitch, then hammered tight with a tool called an asti, so the seam beds into the leather and holds for years.

The upper is where the design lives. The T-shaped strap, the toe ring and the side ears are cut and fitted, and the braided thong known as veni, a thin plait of leather strings, is worked into the strap, sometimes in the elaborate Detha Veni style that marks the finest pairs. The heel is glued and stitched to the sole with a cobbler's knife known locally as a raambi. Finally the chappal is oiled and finished, and left to dry. The whole process uses no machinery of any consequence, and a skilled artisan can be recognised by the evenness of the braiding and the tightness of the hammered seams. Artisans say a new pair should be oiled and left overnight, and oiled again every few months, and that the leather softens noticeably within days of first wear.

Motifs and design language

A Kolhapuri chappal has four defining elements: the Kapshi shape, a pointed toe; the side ears, small flaps at the sides of the upper; the toe ring; and the T-shaped strap. The classic styles are named for their places and patrons: Kapshi, from the village of Kapshi; Kurundvadi, from the town of that name; and Shahu, named for the Maharaja who patronised the craft. Some pairs are plain and workmanlike, while others are dressed up with punched patterns, coloured leather and braided veni, made for weddings and festivals. The finest veni work is a signature in itself, a pattern of interlaced leather that no machine reproduces well. Colour, traditionally, is the natural tan of vegetable-tanned leather, darkening with age and oil.

GI-tag status

Kolhapuri chappals are GI-tagged. They received their Geographical Indication in July 2019, jointly for Maharashtra and Karnataka, under the Geographical Indications of Goods (Registration and Protection) Act, 1999. The tag covers eight districts, Kolhapur, Sangli, Satara and Solapur in Maharashtra, and Belagavi, Dharwad, Bagalkot and Vijayapura in Karnataka, and only chappals made in those districts by the traditional method may be sold as Kolhapuri chappals. The GI is held by two state-run corporations, LIDCOM of Maharashtra and LIDKAR of Karnataka. The tag followed a decade-long campaign by artisans and their supporters. In practice, however, very few makers have registered as authorised users, with reporting in 2025 putting the figure at only 93 among thousands of makers, which limits how far the tag can be enforced.

How to identify an authentic piece

The first test is the stitching. A genuine Kolhapuri is hand-stitched, slightly uneven, with the seams hammered flat into the leather; a machine-made copy has perfectly regular stitching and often a glued sole. The second test is the leather: vegetable-tanned leather smells of leather, not chemicals, feels firm, and is stiff when new, softening with wear and oiling. The third test is the shape: look for the pointed Kapshi toe, the side ears, the toe ring and the T-strap, and for braided veni work rather than printed imitation braiding. The fourth test is origin: an authentic pair should be made in one of the eight GI districts, and a seller who can name the workshop or cluster, and sells the chappal with a GI tag, is a better bet than a stall selling identical pairs at a suspiciously low price. And there is the wear test: a real Kolhapuri moulds to the foot and lasts for years, while a copy cracks or falls apart within months.

Where the craft stands today

The Kolhapuri chappal is both famous and fragile. Trade estimates put the craft at more than ten thousand artisan households producing around six hundred thousand pairs a year, sold across India and exported abroad. But the artisans see little of that fame: machine-made copies undercut them, the work is hard and poorly paid, and younger workers leave for steadier jobs. The craft made world headlines in June 2025, when a luxury house showed sandals closely resembling Kolhapuris on a Milan runway, prompting outrage among artisans and a visit by the brand's technical team to workshops in Kolhapur the following month; the episode brought attention but no compensation, since the GI tag protects the name rather than the design. The more hopeful signs are local: women's artisan clusters, such as the one at Kagal near Kolhapur, direct sales through the city's chappal market, and buyers who have learned to seek out the hand-stitched original.