It’s time for yet another misleading term only found in the world of marketing:
bicast leather (n.)
Bicast leather is to leather what astroturf is to turf, or what white chocolate is to actual chocolate. It is a horrible aberration that you can legally say is leather, even though it is really just plastic with a backing of paper-thin waste material that happened to once come from a cow.
Thanks for the loophole, US government!
You’ll see a lot of “leather” furniture for sale at Target, Pier One, and even Crate & Barrel that is made of this so-called bicast leather. Sadly, though, the material is not leather at all: it’s just a micrometer-thin layer of split leather that’s been covered over with a thick polyurethane coating. In fact, in the UK and New Zealand, you’re not even allowed to call it leather, and for good reason: because it’s plastic! Clever, clever US marketers….
See also: chocolatey coating