Quote Originally Posted by JSFMACLJR View Post
Real men wear patent leather and buckles, and are proud of it!
Just a thought and FYI only...in recent times (the last fifty years?)...patent=plastic.

The best part of the leather (sometimes it's not even leather)--the corium--is stripped away or split off to use for "better shoes" and what is left is laminated to a sheet of vinyl or something similar.

I'm not going to presume to say what "real men" do but "cheap manufacturers" make patent from what would be considered, in any other context, "offal."