The ability to readily discriminate between natural things and synthetic mimics in the environment is a skill which is not only important for the survival of many species but also has significant consumer value. The ability to discriminate between real and fake relies on the acuity of the different senses, the material characteristics of the stimuli, past knowledge and experience and the goal of the behavior. In a large study, conducted as part of a science exhibition, we investigated the relative contribution of vision and touch to the categorization of a set of different fabric stimuli as natural. The stimuli were comprised of 44 fabric samples, which varied systematically from natural to synthetic. We also examined whether this categorization performance correlated with other more higher-order judgments such as pleasantness, familiarity, softness, value and hedonics using a 7-point scale. We found that perceived naturalness was strongly correlated with both value and hedonics. Specifically, natural stimuli were rated as more valuable and were liked more. In a second experiment, we examined the brain activations associated with the perception of naturalness using a subset of these stimuli and cross correlated these activation with ratings of value and hedonics. We found that whilst each modality contributes to the perception of naturalness independently, there is some evidence for multisensory contributions to the perception of naturalness. Although other correlates of naturalness differentially affected brain activations these differences were not generally observed in sensory cortices. These results have implications on our understanding of how the senses contribute to more higher-order decisions related to the perception of texture.