From cultural appropriation debates to Gen Z Indian Americans reclaiming heritage through modern festival fashion, Coachella has seen it all.
The massive music and arts festival that brings the desert to life over two weekends every year in April at the Empire Polo Club, California, the Coachella Valley Music Festival has always been a welcoming place for diversity in all genres of music and fashion.
Although the festival was never focused on representation of any sort, it wasn’t until the early 2010s when Coachella became the primary battleground for cultural appropriation. The internet lashed out over celebrities mixing sacred cultural symbols with “boho style” fashion and labeling it as mere party attire.
The bindis and henna used liberally up until then became a topic of cultural debate around 2013 when celebrities like Vanessa Hudgens and Selena Gomez, widely known as the queens of Coachella at the time, were photographed with bindis as part of their “festival aesthetic” paired with bikinis, which gained backlash because it stripped the symbol of its meaning in a cultural context.
READ: Priyanka Chopra’s back to singing again; see her desi take on classic ‘Last Christmas’ (November 8, 2025)
2014 and 2015 saw the peak of this matter. Several fashion blogs and news outlets published guides on “how not to be offensive at Coachella” and many South Asian women launched the #ReclaimTheBindi campaign during the Coachella season on Tumblr and Twitter (now X) as a direct response to the people using their sacred symbols as disposable “costumes” without facing the same racial prejudice they faced.
In recent years, although Indian fashion has largely faded as a “trend,” it is now replaced by a much stronger emphasis on “cultural appreciation.”
The pivot happened In 2023, when Diljit Dosanjh shattered the festival’s aesthetic glass ceiling by performing in a traditional Punjabi tehmat (or tamba, meaning a traditional lower garment) and kurta. His viral stage announcement, “Punjabi aa gaye Coachella oye! (This Punjabi has reached Coachella),” became an instant anthem of representation. He later explained that the line wasn’t planned: “That wasn’t just my feeling… it connected with everyone because it didn’t just come out of me… it’s all of us.”
Apart from influencers, celebrities like Lara Raj from K-pop girl group KATSEYE made her Coachella debut in her usual bindi and bangles, proving to a generation of brown girls that visibility matters.
Influencers like Sheel, a Telugu-based Indian American incorporated a half saree, bold bindi, and maang tikka into her outfit of her own brand named Svarini, a slow fashion label made in California and Delhi, making it the most culturally rooted look of the weekend. “The issue is when people engage with the aesthetics of a culture without engaging with the people behind it,” she said in a Forbes interview. She went on to reclaim visibility by saying, “I don’t think South Asian fashion needed Coachella to become visible. The artistry has always been there.”
READ: Chicago festival showcases Indian dance and music to navigate identity and diaspora (April 17, 2026)
Aditya Madiraju, a well-known beauty creator across platforms like TikTok and Instagram, showed up to the event in what was described as “a walking archive of Indian fashion” all designed by South Asian stylists worn to showcase a statement. When asked about the representation he told Forbes, “What you see on Coachella grounds is just 1% of what South Asian fashion offers.”
Seerat Saini, an NYC-based Indian creator, and many others wore outfits with South Asian craftsmanship and Indian brands, styled them with heavy traditional Indian statement jewelry, tying it back to their roots with Instagram captions like “there’s nothing more Indian than a jasmine flower and nothing more timeless than a sari.”
Although the fashion is not always worn accurately compared to how it is traditionally styled, the Indian influencers flaunting it seems more like reclaiming the narrative of what was once belittled.
According to the fans, visibility from south Asian communities at Coachella this year was “intentional” and such representation in mainstream media has become important for young people to feel comfortable and connected to their roots.