This paper examines key characteristics of historic and current man-made materials that attempts to imitate natural leather and suede. There is an historic path from Pegamoid, Fabrikoid and Naugahyde up through the invention of microfiber technology that has led to today’s successful modern artificial leathers and suede. Although the most recent advances in faux suede materials have been attained using highly protected secret processes, these woven and non-woven imitations are looked at here in terms of their history, structure, methods of manufacture (where known), and basic identification. These historic and contemporary faux materials should be studied because objects made from them are represented in museum collections, but an equally important reason is that they are currently being used in display cases for temporary and long-term exhibitions, sometimes in direct contact with historic objects.