Riddhima Kapoor Sahni accused of plagiarising Mikimoto jewellery design

By

Isabelle Crossley

Published
Nov 26, 2018

The jewellery designer Riddhima Kapoor Sahni has been accused of stealing a jewellery design from Kokichi Mikimoto and taking the photo from the jewellery brand’s website.

Riddhima Kapoor Sahni, sister of the Bollywood celebrity Ranbir Kapoor and jewellery designer behind the new brand “R” Jewelry by Riddhima Kapoor Sahni, has been enjoying a successful first year for her brand. Sahni recently released a special holiday collection for the brand that featured peal and diamond pieces.
 
One of the pieces in the new collection is a pair of pearl and diamond earrings. However, the anonymous Instagram account with over 124,700 followers, Diet Sabya, exposed the earrings as a direct copy of a Mikimoto pair. Showing the two photos side by side, it was apparent that the photo itself was directly taken from Mikimoto’s website.

Diet Sabya, which is named after the infamous Instagram account Diet Prada and is similarly dedicated to exposing fashion industry copycats, posted Mikimoto’s photo next to Sahni’s and wrote: "The legendary Kokichi Mikimoto is known in the pearl world as the King of Pearls’. His cultured pearls’ patented in 1916 is a benchmark for the industry at large. So, naturally Jewellery designer of the year’, @riddhimakapoorsahniofficial couldn’t help herself from selling the iconic Mikimoto pearl and diamond earrings under her namesake label. If this is not #gutsontoast, we don’t know what is!"

Sahni has now taken down her original photo but before she could do so, a social media storm had already erupted. As reported by India Today, one Instagram user called the designer and her cohorts the “product of nepotism” and other scathing comments abounded. As the concept of intellectual property becomes more respected in the Indian fashion industry, the number of copycat scandals is increasing. However, so far neither Mikimoto nor Sahni have made a statement on the matter.