The story of a co-authored strap
Antonio Zichichi — Founder of Milano Straps and Casati Milano
My father was a watchmaker. Not professionally — by passion. There were always watches open on the table at home, movements waiting to be reassembled, worn straps waiting to be replaced.
From him I inherited the love for timepieces. But what truly took me, over time, was leather. A living material that changes, that carries the time of whoever wears it. Like a watch, but different. A watch measures time. Leather absorbs it.
Piaget, 1974.
I started at Piaget as a watchmaker. Bench, loupe, ultra-thin calibers. There I learned to look at a detail for hours before touching it. It was the first place where I understood that good work isn't measured in time, but in patience.
Auri Tempore. Milan, 1984.
Ten years after Piaget I opened my first shop in viale San Michele del Carso in Milan. Auri Tempore. Vintage watches — those were the years when nobody was looking for them seriously yet, and you could find extraordinary pieces at prices that would make you laugh today.
In that shop I made a discovery I never forgot. A Patek from the Fifties, original dial, perfect movement. Beautiful. And on top, an anonymous strap — the kind anyone would have put on, bought without thinking. That watch looked switched off. Nothing technical was missing. The right companion was missing.
From that moment I started to understand that the strap isn't an accessory. It's a co-author. The watch tells a story — the strap decides how that story is read.
Twenty-five years in America.
Then twenty-five years in the United States selling Italian watchmaking to a market that didn't know it. I travelled, I met serious collectors, I saw what the people who understand were looking for. And I kept making straps, one by one, while selling watches to those who asked.
The craft.
I started making straps by hand, one at a time. I had no formal leather-work training — I learned by watching, failing, starting over. I learned that the quality of a strap is measured in details most people don't see. But that the wrist feels every day.
I never considered myself a designer. I consider myself a master artisan. The difference is concrete: a designer makes drawings, an artisan makes objects. Every strap that leaves my workshop has passed through my hands. I chose the leather — belly cut or hornback, vegetable-tanned, thickness to the millimeter.
Return to Milan. One hand, two speeds.
I returned to Milan with fifty years of craft and one clear idea: one hand, two speeds.
Milano Straps — Prêt-à-porter
B2B and B2C. Premium leather straps, handmade in my Milan workshop, shipped worldwide. Anyone who wants a real Italian strap no longer needs to take a flight.
Casati Milano — Haute Couture
Atelier by appointment. One client, one watch, one strap. We choose together: the leather, the thread, the stitching, the buckle. I build it for that wrist. There's no catalogue because there's no need for one.
The same eye that at twenty looked at a Piaget caliber today looks at a stitch. I'm looking for the same thing.
In Milan, where everything began.