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There’s a lot of mixed and contradictory information found online about the various kinds of napped leathers – nubuck, split suede, full reverse suede and roughout. Here I go through all of these leathers and sort out what each of these actually are, the differences and the pros and cons of them all.
To judge leather quality is a science of its own, and many times people confuse leather quality with specific properties of various types of leather. Here’s an ambition to pin out what the differences are between the two terms, to help give you and idea of when you have shoes with lesser quality leather and when you have shoes that just has a property that you mistake for bad quality.
Leather that is really dense with small pores is in general a lot easier to have a shine on, also on areas that moves. The younger the calf is the denser the hide, that’s why this type of leather nowadays usually is called babycalf, even if it was standard calf leather a number of decades ago.
Today it’s increasingly common with sanding down leather, mainly to remove cracks, but sometimes also only to smoothen out creases or to remove dye before doing patina. However, when removing the top layer of the grain surface, the leather becomes more sensitive, which one need to be aware of. Here’s pictures and a film to prove the case, and a bunch of leather knowledge as a bonus.
If you’re interested in learning more about leathers – the various kinds, various properties and much more – there’s few better places than The Leather Dictionary. A sort of Wikipedia for all things leather, an excellent source for knowledge.
Recent articles continued:
Shell cordovan is a loved material by many, with its special characteristics and durability. However, there’s a few downsides of cordovan that some might not know about, which can be good to be aware of if you are an aspiring cordovan shoe buyer.
As people’s environmental awareness increases, we have also seen a demand for vegetable tanned upper leathers to a greater extent than before. The shoes above are an example of such, with veg-tanned grain leather from the Swedish tannery Tärnsjö, on the Shoegazing boot Sarek that I did with Hungarian Vass a few years ago.
Cordovan is an immensely popular material for shoes and leather accessories, with its special character and features. However, it was not until about 100 years ago that it first started to be used for shoes, since cordovan tanneries were forced to further develop the material after a new invention caused a historical crisis for the cordovan industry.
The past few years the demand for regular cowhides has dropped dramatically, and in some places one has started to burry the hides since no one wants them. The reason is that more people want so-called vegan leather, the interest in leather shoes decline in general, and more. So far, premium skins have been spared, but the question is whether this trend will reach here as well.
One difficulty that the growing online retailing of shoes poses for both stores and customers is the rendering of the colour of the shoes. The shade of leather, if not black, can vary greatly depending on light and situation, and can also differ between hides and batches.
