Real or faux leather? Luxury or ready-to-wear mass production? Characterization of three TPU shoe coatings (ca. 1970) from the Kunstmuseum Den Haag fashion collection

During the 1970s, the shoe industry’s transition from real to faux leather raises questions about transparency regarding the materials used and the real cost of the production. Were luxury brands conscious of the quality of the products that they offered consumers, compared to other ready-to-wear market brands? Or, on the other hand, were they simply following trends in the fashion industry made possible by the introduction of leather substitutes? By studying three different shoes from the Kunstmuseum Den Haag’s fashion collection, a comparison can be drawn between the products used by well-known luxury fashion brands such as Charles Jourdan or Gucci, and those used by lesser-known brands for mass production such as Valentina. The results obtained by analytical techniques (OM, SEM-EDX, ATR-FTIR) reveal similarities between the both luxury brands and the mass-production brand as well as similar degradation elements.