Both materials have a legitimate place. What follows is the comparison without the marketing from either side.

What each one actually is

Genuine leather is animal hide, tanned to stop it decomposing. Most jacket leather is either chrome-tanned (fast, supple, the industry norm) or vegetable-tanned (slower, firmer, ages with more character).

Faux leather almost always means polyurethane (PU) coated onto a textile backing. Older PVC-based versions are stiffer and less common in fashion today. Newer plant-based alternatives — made partly from cactus, apple or mycelium — still generally use a polymer binder and backing.

Durability

This is where the materials separate most clearly.

Leather is a fibre structure all the way through. When it flexes, the fibres move against each other; when it scuffs, you are seeing a surface mark on a material that is the same underneath.

Faux leather is a coating bonded to a backing. When it flexes repeatedly at the elbow or the zip line, the coating eventually cracks, and once cracked it cannot be restored — it delaminates from the backing and flakes.

In practice: a well-made leather jacket, conditioned occasionally, lasts decades. A PU jacket in regular wear typically shows cracking within three to five years.

Feel and appearance

New faux leather can look very convincing, and the best of it is genuinely pleasant. What it cannot do is change. Leather softens, deepens in colour and develops shine where it is handled; faux leather looks its best on day one.

On the other hand, faux leather is consistent — no hide variation, no natural marks — which some people prefer.

Weight and warmth

Faux leather is usually lighter and less breathable. Leather breathes to a degree and buffers temperature well, which is part of why it works across a wide range of conditions.

Repairability

A leather jacket can be re-dyed, re-lined, have its zip replaced and its seams re-stitched. Leather repair is an established trade.

Cracked faux leather cannot meaningfully be repaired. The jacket is replaced.

Care

Leather needs occasional conditioning, protection from prolonged direct heat, and drying naturally when wet. Faux leather needs less — a wipe with a damp cloth — but it cannot be restored once it degrades.

Environmental impact

This is the part where honest comparison is hardest, and where most claims on both sides overreach.

Leather is a by-product of the meat industry, which means its footprint is partly allocated from livestock farming. Chrome tanning uses chemicals that require proper effluent treatment; poorly regulated tanneries are a genuine environmental problem. Vegetable tanning is slower and uses plant tannins, but is not automatically low-impact.

Faux leather is largely petroleum-derived plastic. It avoids animal agriculture and tanning entirely, but it sheds microplastics and does not biodegrade. A faux jacket replaced three times over a decade has a different footprint from one worn for ten years.

The most defensible statement is the boring one: the lowest-impact jacket is the one you wear for a long time. Longevity does more than material choice, in either direction.

We are not going to tell you leather is a sustainable material. We will tell you that a jacket built to last fifteen years is better than three that last five, and that is the standard we build to.

How to tell them apart

  • Grain. Real leather's grain is irregular and varies across a panel. Faux leather repeats.
  • Edges. Look inside a pocket or at a cut edge. Faux leather shows a fabric backing; leather shows a fibrous suede-like underside.
  • Touch. Leather warms to your hand within seconds. Faux leather stays cool longer.
  • Smell. Leather has a distinct, slightly sweet smell. Faux leather smells faintly of plastic or of nothing.
  • Label. In the EU, non-leather materials cannot be described as leather. "Leather-look", "PU" and "vegan leather" all mean faux.