The right strap isn't chosen. It's built together.
Il cinturino giusto non si sceglie. Si costruisce insieme.
The watch was resting on the workbench, face down. Its owner had pulled a chair closer to the window and was running his thumb across three cuts of leather — each a different grain, a different weight, a different life. He said nothing for several minutes. There was no reason to rush.
This is how most commissions begin in Via XX Settembre. Not with a catalogue. Not with a screen. With leather under your fingertips and natural light coming through the glass.
When you arrive at our atelier in Milano, we sit together. We look at the watch — its proportions, its case thickness, the arc of its lugs. We listen to how you wear it: daily or occasionally, on bare skin or over a cuff, in dry climate or humid. These details are not small talk. They determine everything that follows.
Then comes the selection of the leather. We keep our hides in the workshop, not in a warehouse. You choose the skin from those present — touching, bending, holding each piece against the case. Leather is not a colour swatch. It is a material that will age alongside you, and you should know its character before committing to it.
A full-grain calfskin, for instance, arrives with a tight, almost austere surface. Over the first months it softens at the fold points. After a year it carries the particular curve of your wrist — no other. A vegetable-tanned hide will darken gradually, recording light and wear like a quiet journal. These are not defects. They are the reason we work with leather at all.
Once the skin is chosen and the design confirmed, the strap passes through more than fifty steps — cutting, skiving, edge shaping, stitching, burnishing — each carried out by hand in our Milan workshop. No step is automated. No step is skipped. The process takes approximately four weeks. We do not compress this timeline because the leather needs rest between certain stages, and so does the craftsperson.
What you receive is a strap built to accompany you for at least eighteen months of daily wear, often considerably longer. Not because we over-engineer it, but because each material is allowed to do what it does best when handled with patience.
If you prefer not to wait, finished straps from our current production are available in the online collection — the same hands, the same method, ready to ship.
But if your watch deserves a strap that begins with a conversation, we are here.