How To Spot Fake Alligator Leather And Ostrich Leather

Alligator and ostrich leathers are known as high quality luxury materials used to make elegant and noble accessories for instance of watch straps, leather wallets, belts, and shoes for both males and females. The quality of alligator and ostrich leathers is extremely good due to theirs high durability with beautiful natural textures. Therefore, these materials have become favorable choices for numerous famous brands in the world for their fashion items.

Due to these materials’ popularity and advantage, many ostrich leather products have been made fake or imitated in the market. Producers always give a clear depiction on their products, but some traders deceive customers because of immediate benefits. They give customers wrong information, make them confused and sell poor quality fake products with the price of real ones.

To make it easier for you to choose or examine whether an alligator or ostrich watch strap is real or not, Babu Handmade leather offers you some tips as below:

Discern Real Alligator Leather

Alligator leather: Due to the typical characteristics of natural alligator leather as well as imitation alligator leather technology, there are some basic differences between real and fake alligator leather as below:

Natural leather:

• The joints between scale layers are softer and more flexible when compared to the hard scales.
• The longer alligator leather is used, the glossier it becomes.
• Another way to spot fake from real one is that you drop a small amount of water on the surface of natural alligator leather watch strap. If alligator is real, it will absorb some water which spreads around. Meanwhile, fake materials (Simili) have a non-absorbing tendency, and the drop of water will simply slide out right of their surface. This is a simple way to examine the product without damaging its quality.

Artificial leather:

• The joints are harder than scales, and inflexible because the compression process creating textures makes the joints compressed tighter. That’s why the joints are harder than scales.
• The distance between the fins in the vertical does not have textures.
• After 3-5 months in use, fake leather will be torn out, cracked and broken. When burning, real leather will not burst into flame but turn into ash and smell of burnt hair.
• Real alligator looks very delicate and luxurious.

Below are some alligator watch strap models that you may want to have a look at:

• Manmade alligator leather products are very cheap, just around $5 – $25

Furthermore, fake materials look very different from the real ones, and you cannot feel the grandeur and beauty of an alligator – a deadly predator.

Note: Many customers who have never known that alligator leather is incombustible and not scratching. It is a misconception. All organic materials, even human bones, are burnable. If not being tanned by high technology and being dead, alligator scales will be flake or crack.

Caution when using alligator leather products

1. Avoid dipping alligator leather in water since its natural color will be darker, and if being soaked in water in a long time, it will lose its natural brightness.
2. You should not bend the watch strap because alligator scales are made of keratin, they are not highly elastic.
3. You should keep alligator leather items away from sharp objects.

For fake alligator leather products made from embossed cowhide, you can’t scratch the surface. Furthermore, artificial leather products are alike real ones, but after only 2 months, the layer of paint will be torn out.

Distinguish Real Ostrich Leather Watch Straps From Fake Ones

There are 2 types of ostrich leather which are ostrich body leather and ostrich leg leather.

Natural ostrich leg leather

The skin of the ostrich leg is scaly in appearance, with many small scales on either side of the leg and a series of large, semi-rectangular shapes going down the front of the leg in the center.

Like the leather you get from the back of the ostrich, ostrich leg leather is fairly flexible, making it useful for accessories that have to be able to bend.

Manmade ostrich leg leather

Obviously, fake ostrich leg skin does not have the layered, glossy, and hard structure of scales like real material. If you observe carefully, you will recognize that unlike real ostrich leather, there is no distance between scales on the surface of fake skin. It is just imitated the lines of real scales.

Real ostrich body leather

The ostrich body leather is made up of quilled and smooth areas, quaintly known as the “valley and hill” grain pattern.

The distinct quills are formed at the site where the feather grew, and give ostrich its characteristic three dimensional look and feel. In the “valley” or smooth area between the quills, striations similar to those found on the palm of the hand, contribute to the special character of ostrich leather.

Imitated ostrich body leather

Fake skin has round quills which are vertically embossed on the surface as well. However, they are quite shallow and unevenly distributed. Furthermore, their colors are completely different from the flat parts of skin.