Nato straps! What is it all about? They are shit right!
There is something about good design be it architecture, Automobile design, Furniture and the reason your reading this watches.
While I’m sure this will be met with more people disagreeing with what I feel about this subject rather than agreeing, I still feel its worthy of a little Scottish Watches article.
Instagram is a fantastic platform for this interest and passion, you get inspiration for strap combinations through colour etc and can search for a piece your looking for through various hashtags etc. One common thing I find when searching Instagram is just how many people love the Nato strap. A cheap nylon style strap designed for the military by the military to keep your watch safe from falling off your wrist if a spring bar fails. James bond had his sub on one, An ill-fitting one at that which looked terrible. Then you see Instagram watch accounts doing the same thing. See Christian at Theo and Harris with an example of how garbage it looks with the exposed spring bars.
To get to my initial point on design. These watch brands have designers and well paid designers at that. Let’s use Rolex as an example here. Do Rolex offer any of their professional models on a Nato strap? No. I feel the main reason why is because they have been designed with an excellent steel bracelet to which the watch should belong.
While I know now that many of you will say that Tudor do them, Omega do them, Rolex Mil subs have them. I know all that.
But the modern day Rolex does not though. I see James Stacey put a grey Nato piece of you know what on the new BB58 and it looked terrible.
I may add here that I own the new Blue 58 on steel and do actually like the French fabric strap they offer and have ordered one. The regular Nato just looks plain bad. You can cut them so they don’t sit as high which again James Stacey did his article recently about this. The extra length can be shortened by cutting them then you don’t have as much strap to tuck in etc. All this can be done with a coin, scissors and a lighter. Turning it all into a Blue Peter affair to give you a James Bond feel. What on earth are people playing at I just don’t get it.
To me it’s no dissimilar to buying a new Sports car, let’s take the Porsche 911 (The Hodinkee boys love these along with Scottish watches very own Rikki) which again has had a design team draw up the car with certain alloy wheel options and then driving the car away to Halfords and putting some aftermarket shit wheels on the car.
I’ve bought Nato straps and tried them and just cannot warm to them but putting a Nato on a sub with an excellent SS Bracelet to me is just bonkers
I’m happy to leave it there and see what comments and discussion will arise from the humble nylon piece of Rubbish. Are you a fan or Not?
