Does anybody know who produces the Shell Cordovan straps of the "Italian" VC Ingenieur? Can he be considered a partner of IWC? I would say so. I wonder if he produces straps on demand, or has standard sized straps for other IWC watches, where the lug size and buckle size are known. Such a medium padded strap in honey brown would look nice on the steel VC Portuguese, for instance.
Kind regards,
Paul
Hi Paul,
send me an email to fmattes@web.de and i can help you with these straps.
kind regards
Franz
Hi Franz,
I cannot read my mail from my holiday address, nor can I send. You and I have a mutual Facebook friend on this matter, I wanted to promote the interest in this apparently high class leather here, and just wondered if I could get a confirmation from the IWC source ("about IWC" said something about partners). I know about the German "Merchant", this is the real deal?
Kind regards,
Paul
really? VC Ingenieur uses Shell Cordovan straps? this is news to me. What is your opinion of it? From what you have written, looks like you are more than please with it?
The only watch with a Shell Cordovan strap under my possession is a Nomos Tangomat. Their Shell Cordovan strap is supposed to be top-notch... but frankly speaking I am quite disappointed with its quality. First of all, its color faded (even to a point of what I would called "decolorized") after a few months of normal use. Also, while it is supposed to be quite durable (I heard it should outlast many other different types of leather straps), my experience has been quite the opposite. I found the regular crocodile leather strap on my Longines and Omega of much better quality and durability than the Nomos'. I hope the IWC is a completely different story.
I use Shell Cordovan straps in different colors and styles on all of my watches with leather straps because i like this material very much. I also have Shell Cordovan shoes from Alden and Heinrich Dinkelacker and Shell Cordovan belts from Kaufmann.
NOMOS was the first watchmaker to use shell Cordovan Straps, but no more companies seem to discover the material, recently watches like this IWC Inge Tribute to Italy, but also from Junghans and Wempe Zeitmeister use Shell Cordovan straps. Only natural materials are used to make this leather, no chemicals. And my experience is that it is very durable. But since also the colors are made with natural ingredients they vary. Normally the dark brown straps get a bit lighter over time and the light brown (cognac) get a bit darker. But the black color is normally quite stable. I also experienced that sometimes the NOMOS straps are quite dry, but they should not fade out in color, NOMOS changed the supplier for their straps some years ago, and i think the former supplier made better Quality.
Thank you Franz, your answer gives some insight in this matter. Not too long ago I stated here that Shell Cordovan was calfs leather, which it is not, the whole subject arose my interest. Knowing IWC uses (about) the best, I was interested to know who made these straps, on the picture of the "Tribute to Italy VC Ingenieur" the strap looks magnificent indeed. I wondered if it could be ordered for other watches too, giving the sizes of watch, wrist, lugs and buckle. As I hate to make mistakes on quality I hoped to learn the name of the partner of IWC here: please IWC, is it possible to reveal the name? Thank you!
Kind regards,
Paul
Here is a good video about the production of Shell Cordovan leather: vimeo.com/4814754