BTS's V Wears JULIUS 'Lungi Trousers' at Chile Rehearsal — and Indian Fans Ask Who Gets the Credit

A Rehearsal Outfit Becomes the Story in Santiago

BTS's V has found himself at the centre of a heated online discussion that he did not start, and that is not really about him. According to reporting by Koreaboo, V was seen during rehearsals at Estadio Nacional in Chile wearing a pair of pleated, floor-length trousers made by the Japanese label JULIUS, ahead of the ARIRANG World Tour's Chilean concert date on 15 October.

The garment, marketed by the brand as its 'Lungi Trousers', sits within the label's avant-garde line and carries a retail price of $1,241.

The outfit itself would ordinarily be a footnote in a tour cycle — a rehearsal photograph, a styling detail, a piece of fashion trivia for fans who follow stage wardrobes closely. Instead, the naming of the item turned it into a flashpoint. Once fans circulated the product information, Indian listeners were quick to point out that the 'lungi' in the style name is not a JULIUS invention at all, but a garment with deep roots in South Asian dress.

The response has been directed squarely at the brand rather than the performer, and that distinction matters for how the story should be read. V wore the trousers; the naming, the pricing and the framing of the piece as a designer concept came from elsewhere. The row is less about one artist's wardrobe choice than about what happens when a traditional garment is renamed, repackaged and sold at a luxury price point.

Why the Word 'Lungi' Set Off the Argument

The core of the criticism is straightforward. Fans argued that a Japanese brand had taken a form of dress with long-standing cultural associations in India and elsewhere in South Asia, renamed it as part of an avant-garde collection, and presented it without acknowledgement of where the shape came from. Several drew an explicit parallel: they asked how it would be received if an Indian designer took a Japanese traditional garment, gave it a new designer name and sold it as an original luxury concept.

That comparison, which circulated widely in the replies, is the emotional engine of the backlash. It is not an argument that cultural exchange should never happen — fashion has always borrowed, blended and reinterpreted — but that the direction of travel and the distribution of credit tend to be uneven. When a garment moves from a regional everyday item into a European or Japanese luxury line, the people who made it ordinary rarely see their names attached to it.

It is worth noting that the interpretation of the trousers as cultural appropriation is the reading of the fans criticising the brand, not an established legal or industry finding. What the reporting establishes is the reaction and its reasoning: the naming, the luxury framing and the absence of visible credit, taken together, are what prompted the objections.

Lungi or Dhoti — a Labelling Problem on Top of Everything Else

A second strand of criticism was more technical, and arguably more damaging to the brand's position. Multiple fans pointed out that the pleated, draped style in the photographs is closer to a dhoti than a lungi, and that calling it a lungi mislabels the very tradition it draws on. The lungi and the dhoti are distinct garments with their own regional histories and ways of being tied and worn, and conflating them suggests that the research behind the product did not go very deep.

This is where the criticism shifts from a question of credit to a question of competence. Accusations of appropriation usually invite a defence about homage, influence and creative freedom. Accusations of getting the name wrong are harder to answer, because they suggest the source material was treated as a vague aesthetic reference rather than as a living tradition with specific forms, terms and meanings.

For fans, the mislabelling compounds the original grievance. It is one thing to draw on a garment and credit it. It is another to draw on it, rename it inconsistently and present the result as a novel design idea. The two complaints — no credit and no accuracy — reinforce each other rather than standing separately.

Why the Frustration Landed on the Brand, Not the Artist

Throughout the discussion, Indian fans were notably careful to separate V from the decision being criticised. The objections were aimed at JULIUS: at the product name, at the framing of the piece as an avant-garde item, and at the price at which it is sold. That is a meaningful distinction in a fandom context where a performer can easily become the target of frustration that properly belongs to a stylist, a brand or a creative director.

The separation also reflects how stage fashion works. Idols appear in garments selected by styling teams, often supplied by labels seeking exposure on a global tour. A member of BTS wearing a piece on a rehearsal day at a stadium in Santiago is a significant marketing moment for the label concerned — and with that visibility comes scrutiny of the label's own choices, including the names it gives its products.

In practical terms, this means the reputational risk sits with JULIUS. The reporting does not include a statement from the brand, so the next development most readers will be watching for is whether it addresses the naming, the sourcing language or the credit question at all. Until then, the disagreement remains where it started: in the replies rather than in a company response.

What a $1,241 Trouser Tells Us About the Luxury Frame

Price is not incidental to this story. The trousers retail for $1,241, a figure that fans repeatedly placed next to the garment's origins. The contrast is the point: a form of dress that is ordinary and accessible in one part of the world arrives in another as a limited, expensive, conceptual object, and the value added is credited to the designer rather than to the tradition.

This is a familiar dynamic in global fashion, and it is not confined to any single country or brand. The mechanism is consistent: a shape is lifted from its context, given a new name in a European or East Asian design vocabulary, positioned as innovation, and sold to consumers who may never encounter the original. The people who wore it first become, at best, an uncredited reference point.

The avant-garde framing sharpens the tension further. Labelling a draped trouser as part of an avant-garde line implies that the form is new, or at least newly conceived. For fans who grew up with the garment in question, that implication is the insult — not the borrowing itself, but the suggestion that the borrowing was invention.

What Fans Are Actually Asking For

Strip away the heat of the timeline and the requests are modest. Fans want the garment named accurately, its origins acknowledged, and its tradition treated as something more than a mood board. None of that requires a brand to stop designing. It requires research and a line of credit.

That is a workable standard, and it is one that has become more common across the fashion industry in recent years, even if enforcement remains uneven. Labels that do name their sources — in product descriptions, campaign notes or designer statements — tend to absorb far less criticism than those that do not. The cost of getting it right is low; the cost of getting it wrong, on a stage this large, is measured in days of angry quote-tweets.

For K-pop specifically, tour styling is now a global-facing channel. What an idol wears on a rehearsal day in Chile is seen within hours in Seoul, Mumbai, London and Los Angeles. That reach makes the wardrobe a place where these questions will keep arriving, whether or not the artists themselves have any involvement in the decisions.

The Takeaway

The V rehearsal story is a small incident with a clear shape. A performer wore a designer garment; the designer's naming of that garment drew objections from fans who recognised its origins; the objections were aimed at the brand. Nothing about the trousers themselves is controversial. The word on the label is.

What happens next is largely up to JULIUS. The reporting so far gives us the reaction, the reasoning and the price tag, but not a company position. How the brand handles the naming question — with a correction, a credit, an explanation or silence — will determine whether this stays a two-day discourse or becomes a longer-running example of how global fashion handles the traditions it borrows from.

For K-pop fans, the episode is also a reminder of how much interpretive weight now sits on stage clothing. A tour wardrobe is no longer just fabric and styling; it is a statement that travels further and faster than anyone involved in choosing it can control.