Each autumn, Switzerland’s cantons cull some 15,000 wild red deer to keep forest and herd in balance — and for years, nearly all of that leather went to waste. Cervo Volante, the Zurich firm founded to correct the oversight, tans those hides vegetably and turns them into some of the handsomest straps in the business. Oris, Hölstein’s resident independent conscience, has been their partner long enough that the collaboration now has seasons of its own.
The newest arrives dressed for the season: a Big Crown Pointer Date with a burgundy dial that deepens toward the rim like the last hour of an autumn afternoon. The 40mm steel case keeps the 1938 original’s grammar — fluted bezel, oversized crown, cathedral hands — while the pointer date circles the dial’s edge on a red-tipped hand, the complication that has been the Big Crown’s signature for nearly ninety years. Numerals, markers and hands all carry Super-LumiNova; a double-domed sapphire and 50 metres of water resistance handle the practicalities.
Calibre 754 ticks inside, automatic with hacking seconds and a 41-hour reserve — unglamorous, dependable, very Oris. The deerskin strap, in a tone matched to the dial and fitted with a quick-change system, is the point of the exercise: leather with a traceable Alpine provenance, from an animal that was never farmed, finished by a company that exists precisely so nothing is wasted.
At CHF 2,250, unlimited, this is the opposite of the week’s auction theatrics — a watch bought to be worn hard and handed down, its sustainability story stitched rather than printed. The burgundy is the best colour the partnership has produced, and autumn in the Gulf, such as it is, deserves marking somehow.
