Paul Foulkes Arellano writes on LinkedIn: A significant portion of cow leather, roughly 40%, is corrected grain leather. This means the outer layer of the hide has been sanded down to minimize imperfections and then treated with synthetic pigments and a polyurethane finish to create a more uniform appearance. This is your typical shiny leather for shoes. It has a thin plastic coat on top, which is what you touch. Same for patent leather and mass market garment leathers.

Another 45% is lower grades of leather, including split leather known as suede (the dermis, not the epidermis) and bonded leather.

Only a smaller percentage, around 10-15%, is considered full-grain leather, which retains the original grain of the hide without any alterations.

Why is this? If you’ve ever inspected hide before it gets tanned, it is full of tick marks, scratches, scars and other imperfections.

Just think how a cow lives. It’s not in a lab.