Belt and brace-lets
The shoes make the suit. The bag pulls the outfit together. The watch – and specifically what it sits with on your wrist – completes your look in a way nothing else does. It’s the detail people appreciate and will remember longest.
At Christopher Ward, straps and bracelets have never been an afterthought. From the first sketch of any new watch, how it connects to your wrist – and how that connection looks and feels – is part of the design conversation.
“For me, a strap or bracelet is like a pair of shoes,” says CEO Mike France. “Beautiful shoes enhance a suit and feel great to wear. The same is true for straps and bracelets. It’s about the comfort of wearing as well as the look and we are constantly seeking to find ways to improve both.”
That thinking has driven two of the most meaningful innovations we’ve made in our bracelets.
The first was the quick-release system, fitted to every strap and bracelet since 2019. Changing a strap used to mean watchmakers’ tools, spring-loaded pins and a testing of your patience. Now you slide, pull and click. Done.
But CW product director Jörg Bader, based at our atelier in Biel, Switzerland, wasn’t satisfied. “We’d moved from push pins to screws for a cleaner finish,” he says. “We also introduced on-the-fly adjustment into our clasps to make day-to-day wear more comfortable – with the Consort and Twelve bracelets offering 3mm of quick adjustment via discreet mechanisms on either side of the butterfly clasp, and the Bader bracelet offering up to 6mm of adjustment. The next step was letting our customers resize their bracelet themselves, at home, without any tools at all.”
That step is iLink™.
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