Good news and bad news.

Let’s start with the good news. We now know that those departmental stores selling leather goods probably use genuine leather.

Why? Uhm, that’s got to do with the bad news.

Here, look at this:

Genuine leather tends to gather mould faster than fake leather. Now, you might be thinking that this is just one leather good.

I forgot to mention that it’s not just one leather good. If you walked into that place (assuming the pictures are real), it will be like walking into those malls you see in zombie movies.

Let me remind you that Malaysia’s movement control order (MCO) is extended until 9 June, and was only enforced on 18 March 2020. Which means, only two months had passed before this (all images from Nex Nezeum):

So it wasn’t just one section of shoes. Let’s look at the bags, shall we?

Like the shoes, different bags showed different levels of mould growth. And one clearly shows a bag worth RM 679.00 to be fully mouldy as well.

I guess money doesn’t buy you protection against nature huh.

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From the tag, we can also see that this is from a Metrojaya outlet, with comments saying this place is probably Suria Sabah.

Wallets are also affected:

As are belts:

Not even the seats are spared:

Some of you might be thinking of your NS boots and running to your storage room, only to see that it’s not mouldy at all.

(Editor’s note: However, mine’s mouldy, so it could mean that it depends on different combat boots.)

There’s a simple reason: humidity.

The conditions in your home are different (unless your home is a giant shopping mall) from the mall. Assuming that the air-conditioning has been turned off in that mall, the increase in humidity could have resulted in the scene you see above. The aircon regulating the humidity prevents mould, bacteria and viruses from growing.

Condolences To You Business Owners

If you’re a business owner and just saw this, this is probably you right now:

Not only is business essentially zero, the storage and maintenance of goods are also now another problem to solve.

The good news is that mould is removable from leather, though I’m not sure if customers would appreciate buying previously mouldy products.

This probably won’t make you feel better, but here’s an oddly satisfying time-lapse of someone removing mould from some stairs:

Kind of reminds NSFs / NSmen of the days when you wash your boots eh?

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