I thought that was a possibility, but it just doesn't look like a faded ink. It looks dark gray to the naked eye. In my experience, faded colors are never this uniformly faded, and they look obviously washed out because of the fading. The color on this is deep and saturated. It's a color I've never seen before (and I've seen and owned faded ink). Also the leather is unlike the leather on ink, though I suppose super fluffy ink leather is possible. Made me wonder if they made special colors just for the Hook, but that would be insane.