I had Heritage leather saddle bags on my '98 standard for over 25k miles. Saw all kinds of weather and looked great. The tops were beginning to loose some of their original shape, after 7 years but it was nothing that couldn't be easily remedied.
Always got compliments on them. It seemed to me that the original Honda soft bags always wore in kinda ugly in comparison. Here's a coupld of shots when I sold the bike,