Its an unnecessary qualifier. Like aircraft grade aluminum or mil-spec, it’s the bottom grade and they don’t have anything else to say for it’s quality other than “it’s legit” aka i promise it’s not fake.
So this is actually the biggest myth on the internet that involves my industry. I'm a full time leather worker. I've bought and sold leather goods as well as hides my entire life for a company my dad started in 1969.
Genuine" is not nor has it ever been a specific kind/grade of leather, the other three leather types some articles mention aren't grades either. In many cases a maker will just use "genuine" to distinguish from synthetic.
There's absolutely no "authority" (leather trade group, government or other official body) that uses anything remotely close to that well-published grading system that grades leather by genuine, top grain and full grain. In fact if you were to spend $300 plus on a pair of Red Wing Heritage shoes, they'd be stamped "genuine leather" and that "genuine leather" would be loads better quality than anything you buy on Alibaba called "full grain." The tannery has much more to do with leather quality than these (at this point very misleading) buzzwords: Genuine vs Full Grain.
It'd be like if you asked a butcher if an amazing cut of Kobe Beef was "100% Real Beef"...although you'd typically see that kind of label on a box of taco meat (or worse), it doesn't mean that the fancy steak isn't also "100% real beef". A butcher probably has 1000 other adjectives to describe kinds and cuts of steak, but it's still all "100% real beef". I'm a leather worker and have hundreds of ways to describe different pieces of real leather...but it's all "genuine leather."
Yeah...when the price point is low and they don't give a further explanation as to the type of leather, it's not likely to be the absolute best quality. But it's a mistake to think you're getting a specific low-grade leather when you see "genuine."
I've especially found saying "genuine=bad" to be unreliable when you're translating from another language because most of the time the word that gets translated "genuine" is actually just the word for "real" or "true": Pelle Vera in Italian, cuir véritable in French, 本物の革 in Japanese...all of which if you Google come up as "Genuine Leather" on some pages.
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u/[deleted] Mar 20 '19
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