Like most people I tend to work on the assumption that a leather rep strap will be about as useful and authentic looking as a piece of coloured in cardboard so tend to budget in a bit extra to get either a gen or a decent alternative. One of my all time favourite watches is the IWC pilot so having a couple of reps and a gen strap I thought that it might be interesting to do a review and comparison, apologies in advance for the pics I'm no photographer but if you want a closer look at anything let me know and I'll post it. All pics show the Gen strap on the left or top, XF factory middle and MKF right or bottom.






As expected the IWC strap is the best of the bunch but the other two come close particularly the XF, the quality of the leather is the main difference which is difficult to get across in pics, the IWC is very soft, plush and has a nicely defined grain and a really nice colour which seems to change depending on the light I suspect that it will age very well. The other difference is the stitching, on the gen it is much smaller and intricate and seems to go right through from front to back whilst on the reps it is clearly superficial. The thread is also a lot thicker on the reps. Overall though they are surprisingly close with the XF one in particular being a great rep, the dimensions on all are exactly the same and the markings match up pretty well too.  Unfortunately not all rep leather straps are decent quality and you tend to pay for a gen, in this case I feel it was worth the upgrade as it definitely looks and feels better but it was closer than some of the other abominations you get on reps!