How to find genuine leather products
New Delhi: With finest mimics of leather available in the market, it is difficult to recognise the original one and people often end up paying high for fake leather. Experts have some tricks to identify whether the product is made of original leather or not.
Salesh Grover, Business Head, OSL Luxury Collections Pvt. Ltd – Corneliani, and Tabby Bhatia, Director, Voganow, have some suggestions:
* Moisture test: One of the easiest ways to identify if the leather is genuine is to do a moisture or water test. Drop some amount of water on your bag or jacket, genuine leather will absorb the droplets while it will float on top of the faux leather skin. Real leather contains pores and is resistant to water to some amount.
* Real leather comes with scratches: Real leather comes from animal skin and may have inbuilt creases whereas a faux leather skin is always even and wouldn’t have such blemishes. In fact, imperfection is a good sign of real leather and repeatedly same pattern is usually a characteristic of an artificial material.
Full grain leather is considered as the highest leather quality, having more fibre strength and durability.
* Sniff test: The smell of leather is always very natural and musty. On the other hand, synthetic leather made of chemicals and machineries would have a plastic like stench. If you are not so sure about the smell of genuine leather, try dropping by to an all-leather shop and you may notice the natural fragrance that leather has.
* Fire test: Genuine leather has a characteristic that it catches fire slowly when we flame up a material for a few seconds whereas faux leather catches flame quickly. The real leather gives smell of burnt hair, on the other hand, faux smells like burnt plastic.
