Leather vs faux leather watch straps

Today we’d like to tell you a little bit more about the most popular type of straps and their eco-friendly alternative. Leather watch straps are the all-time favorite among users and they never go out of style. But with growing interest in animal rights and the ethics of using animal hides in the product, there’s a new category gaining the momentum and that’s faux leather watch straps that have additional advantages for some of the environments or situations you can find yourself in. –

History of the leather watch strap

As with most of the watch strap styles, there’s a long and interesting history behind leather straps. We could go back thousands of years back and look at the ancient warriors attaching parts of the armor or weapons to their bodies using strips of animal hide. But with watch straps, the history starts really at the very end of XIX century during the South African Freedom Wars with soldiers getting rid of their uniforms and strapping their pocket watches to their wrists for the first time in the history.
After that, the demand for leather straps came also from the huge military orders when wrist watches became standard issued items for soldiers (with British Army being the first one to do it).
The leather was quickly replaced by nylon in this context as the natural materials were unreliable and easily destroyed by humid and salt water.

What is leather watch strap made of?

Leather watch straps are mostly made of cows, goats, sheep, pigs, and equines animal skins. For ethical reasons rare materials like alligator, crocodile or lizard skins are not generally available and instead more acceptable leather materials are only embossed with an alligator or similar skin.
Faux leather (also called pleather’, ‘vegan leather’ ‘bicast leather’ and leatherette) is produced from a fabric base and then treated chemically and with wax, so it resembles animal skin leather as closely as possible at greatly reduced cost and, of course, much more environmentally friendly.

Leather watch straps types

Different leather watch straps work best with particular watch faces but most of them are quite versatile and your choice depends only on your taste and personal style. Remember that most of the watch lovers own many times more straps that watch faces so they can swap them depending on the occasion or look. The most common types of leather straps are:

Stitched leather straps
Rally-style straps
Perforated leather watch straps
Bund straps
Padded watch straps

What to choose and why?

As we mentioned before – leather straps are quite universal for the most part and will look great with many different watch faces. But if you hesitate between genuine leather and faux leather you should remember these few things – if you have a constant contact with water, humidity, and e3specially salt water – you might consider faux leather. The same goes if you are price sensitive. On the other hand, if you want the straps to serve you for years (or even to serve your family for generations!) the genuine leather watch straps are the way to go.
At our site, there’s a huge collection of different leather watch strap types both high quality and at great prices. You can also get faux leather straps that will be a perfect fit for your personal style!