On vintage watches a modern leather watch strap is often matched by size and roughly by color to the watch. The main choice seems to be limited between brown and black shades, exotic leather for expensive dress watches, calf leather with different finishing for all other watches. The watch strap is treated as a necessary and useful piece allowing to wear a vintage watch but it is mostly not considered as integral part of the watch design.

In our opinion a watch strap needs to sublimate and enhance the beauty of each individual watch. We try to achieve that with our hand made watch straps.

All watch straps made by ourselves are matched to the individual watch and are entirely hand made. Gio started making watch straps to fit elegant watches from the Art Deco period. These watches are smaller and thinner than modern tool watches and deserve watch straps which fit design, era and size.

Gio doesn’t use templates or machines to manufacture our watch straps, the leather is cut by hand using ruler and scalpel, the holes are punched by hand. All measurements are strictly taken from the individual watch and adapted to the corresponding watch strap and wearer.

Apart of being designed and made individually for each watch, our self-made watch straps are also extremely soft and thin. Commercially available watch straps are often stiff and thick, made for modern, big sized and heavy watches. The individual matching to the watches permits the watch straps to be adapted to the shape of the case, its design and production period.

Some multicoloured watch straps try to jazz-up the retro style of certain watches to enable to adapt them to different clothing or accessory styles and colours.

The decision about the colours, the pattern and type of leather we use, takes into consideration the unique patina of each individual dial and case.

The edges of our watch straps are treated with the same product Hermes uses for their leather bags and leather accessories.

Silk stitching

Gio likes his watch straps with no stitching, this permits a clean and readable design. Some watches with sterling silver or gold cases feature stitched watch straps. The stitching is entirely made by hand, no sewing machine is involved.

For the stitching on latter watch straps Gio uses silk, which is covered with rolled 925 silver -or 22k gold leaf (of adapted shades). This special thread is hand made (a very complex procedure) in small specialist workshops in Japan and is usually used for embroideries on luxury kimonos. This thread is mainly made by coating very thin Japanese washi paper with urushi lacquer and then coating it with silver -or gold leaf. The silvered or gilt paper is cut into strips only 0.3mm wide and then these fine strips are wound around a fine core silk thread. 

Please note, that watch straps with stitching over their whole length can no longer be shortened after manufacture.

Buckles

The buckles are mostly original vintage pieces and also individually sourced and matched to the material, the style and the patina of each watch case and the production period of the watch. If available, we try to match the brand of the buckle to the watch brand, but as most vintage buckles of the well known brands out there are fake, this proofs very difficult a task.

Holes / Fit

Our hand made watch straps usually have one hole. A second hole can be added to allow for some flexibility between summer and winter, where the wrist may be slightly of different diameter.

Sustainability and Recycling

Every effort is made to use every single snippet of leather and to use as low quantities of chemical agents as possible. The smallest snippets of leftover leather are randomly assembled into very colourful ‘mosaic’ watch straps.

CITES

None of the leather we use comes from endangered species. In rare cases Gio reuses leather which nowadays underlies CITES regulations. This leather is recycled from old or broken leather watch straps, bags or belts either manufactured prior to 1947 or for which CITES permission was obtained for its primary use.

Leather Watch Strap Care

Please note that vintage leather watch straps as also our hand made watch straps are neither waterproof nor water resistant (as all leather straps actually!). They will resist repeated hand washing with occasional water splashes but I recommend to not expose the watch straps (and vintage watches in general) to moisture. The colours of the leather can change over time, depending on the exposure to sunlight or moisture. As a summary, I recommend to store your vintage watches in a dark and dry place, whenever you don’t wear them.

All watch straps made by Gio are exclusively made upon request and personal contact, as upgrade for our watches for sale. We do not sell watch straps individually.