What is genuine leather?

What is genuine leather?

Genuine leather is a confusing name for many people. Genuine leather is understood as leather that is made partly or completely with natural animal hide.

Walking through the stores, looking at a briefcase or a pair of shoes, it might seem great when we read “Genuine Leather”. Sounds awesome, right? Like you’re getting the real thing? We hate to let you down, but – it’s not all it’s cracked up to be.

Genuine leather if comprehended literally indicates real leather. The term is to emphasize the material that is real, not made of plastic or rexine or other man-made materials. However, nowadays, people refer genuine leather to a misleading term to make you buy products. For some leather aficionado, they will say that the genuine leather is normally not good quality leather. They are just to deceive people’s mind when it comes to choosing leather. This kind of leather never states where the leather comes from.

Wind back a few decades ago; genuine leather did not have this notoriously bad reputation. Over time, with the increase of commercialization and consumption of leather goods, there are more and more traders want to make great benefits from leather products’ sale, they start reducing cost of manufacturing and bring out the lower quality products for faster sales.

It resulted in a lot of low grade leather products with poor production techniques. Then the vendors started to label such leather as genuine leather to mislead consumer’s minds. That’s why genuine leather becomes a diluted term over the past years.

How is Genuine Leather is Made?

You’re not getting fake lather when you buy genuine – you’re just not getting the top. Actually, it simply means that it’s not top grain or full grain. It could mean a lot of different things, actually. It’s intentionally vague.

In many cases, genuine leather is actually split leather. That means that the lower (inner) layers of the hide are stripped off. The outer, higher-quality parts are “top grain”. The ability to take multiple layers from one hide depends on the thickness of the skin. Some skins, like cow, are often able to be split into various levels. Genuine leather can come from the intermediate layers – between top grain and suede. That’s in term of position in the hide – not in terms of quality.

At times, genuine leather may also be mixed with leather scraps and artificial materials and bonding agents.

Quality

Genuine leather is leather, at least. Of the various possible grains and cuts, it’s at the bottom of the list, though. Relative to high-quality leathers like full grain and top grain, it’s definitely an inferior product.

“Genuine leather” is not as durable and long-lasting as better leather products. It may make a decent first impression but is not going to stand up to ongoing wear and tear.

Appearance

If you’re not concerned about a product that going to have the resilience of a high-quality leather, you may be able to fool some of the people who just take a quick look at your genuine leather product.

Since genuine leather simply means that leather is present in the product, it can run the gamut on appearances. In some places, even the bottom rung of leather product – such as bicast and bonded leather – can be called “genuine.”

So there’s no consistent appearance to this class of leather. What is going to show, though, is its inferiority as it begins to wear quickly.

If you are looking for a good leather product these days, you might want to avoid the products with only a ‘genuine leather’ tag. Ninety percent of such products are made with split leather, the cheapest real leather with respect to its quality and cost. There should be clearer details of the resources the leather come from or you had better take a look at full grain or top grain leather goods.

Refer: https://bestleather.org/types-of-leather/genuine/