Rahul Mishra wins court order against counterfeits—but why were Badshah, Kapil Sharma, and Orry wearing the fakes?

In the couture courtroom drama of the week, which played out not in Paris or Milan but in the Delhi High Court, Rahul Mishra just secured a significant win against copycats. One of the country’s most celebrated designers—the man who’s taken Indian hand-crafted slow fashion to the global stage—Mishra won the court order over the counterfeiting of his brand’s signature “Tigress” motif and other floral patterns in his Sunderbans collection.

The designs somehow found their way onto suspiciously familiar-looking knockoffs on websites, priced at a fraction of the cost of the originals. Here’s where it gets interesting, though: according to Rahul Mishra’s press release on the subject, some of India’s most popular names, such as Badshah, Orry, and Kapil Sharma, were seen wearing the counterfeit creations on their social media handles, with Kapil Sharma sporting one on his wildly popular Netflix show.

The defendants in court, though, weren’t the celebrities themselves but the manufacturers and sellers in textile hubs like Surat, Chandigarh, and Bengaluru, who had been passing off lookalike designs as the couturier’s originals and flooding the market with their knockoffs.

With Mishra’s work consistently championing Indian artisanal craftsmanship, the irony was a lawsuit waiting to happen. When artisans working with the brand have their painstakingly embroidered details reduced to cheap machine-made dupes, not only does their work get diluted, but the brand dilution also inevitably translates to wage theft. In a statement after the hearing, the designer’s counsel said, “This fight is about more than fabric—it’s about preserving the dignity of handcraft, protecting livelihoods, and safeguarding the creative spirit that makes Indian fashion respected worldwide.” The Court agreed, ruling that the fakes erode the brand’s exclusivity and strip away artisan livelihoods.

For the couturier, the Court’s verdict, which directs the infringers to halt sales, pull down listings of the counterfeits, and account for every fake they’ve already sold, is much-needed protection for over 2,000 artisans employed in Rahul Mishra’s ateliers across India, for whom the integrity of their designs is their daily bread and butter. But what pushed the ruling beyond the confines of a legal brief was the celebrity glare. When Kapil Sharma, one of India’s biggest entertainers, appears on a show watched by millions on Netflix wearing an imitation of Mishra’s motif, or when Badshah, the music industry’s most fashion-forward icon, is seen in a copycat, or when Orry, who has built his following around being omnipresent, posts a picture in a counterfeit, the narrative shifts from law to pop culture.

On the subject, Orry told Bazaar India: “Even when I am not involved—I am yet somehow involved!!!!!!!!” It’s the kind of line only Orry could deliver.

But, the entire episode underlines the stealth of how replicas move in India’s fashion economy: absurdly fast, unnoticed, and right onto the backs of the country’s most visible figures. Once relegated to anonymous resellers, the replicas today circulate so smoothly that they can pass through celebrity stylists, OTT wardrobes, and Instagram feeds unchecked.

Of course, this has all played out in many ways before. India has had a long history with replicas. Even as this story was being written, Indian-American entrepreneur Sanjana Rishi posted an Instagram story about the popular London label Ted Baker displaying designs identical to those of the Indian label Bodice.

Now, with the Rahul Mishra battle in court against counterfeits, the question that really stings then becomes—in a landscape where authenticity often takes a back seat to virality, do stars who exert real influence know what they’re wearing? Or worse, does it even matter? For Rahul Mishra, it clearly does. For the artisans, who spend months working on each piece, it always has. And now, thanks to the Delhi High Court, the writing on the wall is clear: couture and craftsmanship are matters of cultural responsibility.

 

Lead image: Longform

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