It’s impossible to watch an episode of “Jersey Shore” without seeing a pair of patent leather platforms. It’s also impossible to sit through New York fashion week without seeing some of the luxe shine. Gucci’s fall 2011 show flaunted rich chocolate patent leather pants, Chloe’s 2012 resort season produced a patent leather trench and Yves Saint Laurent showed a shift dress.
But style guru Filipa Fino said that since its 20th-century boom, vinyl may have surpassed patent leather. Either way, she said, for most people it’s the look that matters. “Shine is back. That ’60s mod look, the Jil Sander aesthetic,” said Fino. “Any time there’s a more modern season, more modern collection, more modern designer, that’s when we start seeing patent being used.”
Patent leather has a long and storied history involving — non-ironically — several patents, all in England around the late 1700s, detailing methods of enhancing leather.
Modern patent leather, the familiar stuff of shiny shoes and purse fobs, has no registered patent. In the mid-1800s, inventor Seth Boyden treated boots with flaxseed oil for durability. The shoes were a hit among society men. Later, polyurethane supplanted flaxseed oil, giving birth to patent leather’s own greatest rival: PVC.
The rise of synthetics in fashion in the ’60s and ’70s made manufacturers wonder: If consumers were drawn simply to the shininess, why not scrap the leather? Enter PVC boots, PVC miniskirts, PVC shift dresses, PVC coats … Mod, trendy and best of all, cheap. For upscale designers, it was a side door to mass market.
“Some high-end designers use vinyl as replacement for patent in handbags,” said Fino, founder of FinoFile.com. “The quality has gotten so good that you really can’t tell a good vinyl from a patent leather. No one thinks, ‘Oh, I have a vinyl bag.’ They assume they’ve got a patent leather one.”
Yolanda Dunderdale of the New York Fashion Center, which provides patent leather to designers like Donna Karan, Marc Jacobs and Calvin Klein, said that due to soaring leather costs in the past four years, many designers have been replacing patent pieces with PVC or other materials.
“They purchase their materials a year out,” Dunderdale said. “Designers plan for one price and by the time they’re paying for it the price has doubled.” The center quotes patent leather prices at anywhere from 500 to 1,000 percent higher than high-quality PVC — $10 to $15 per square foot for the leather and less than $10 per yard for the vinyl.
Patent leather may be more expensive, an animal product and look the same as PVC, but it’s not going away. Fino said that patent leather’s quality keeps it coveted.
“On handbags you can cheat with vinyl a lot more, but with shoes you just can’t,” she says. “The durability of patent leather is so much better and that’s worth it to some designers. At YSL there will always be a patent shoe.”
WHERE TO BUY:
1. JACKET, $4,200
Dennis Basso
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2. PURSE, $1,100
Mulberry
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3. SHOES, $239
Dieppa Restrpo
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4. PUMPS, $625
Christian Louboutin
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5. VEST, $5,200
Dennis Basso
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Section front:
- DRESS, $1,918
David Koma
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SHOES, $795
Christain Louboutin
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