Oris Big Crown X Cervo Volante: Three Pointer Date Editions on Sustainable Deer Leather Straps
As anyone who follows the brand knows, Oris has stepped up its efforts to bring more eco-friendly materials and sustainable practices to watchmaking in recent years, as evidenced by projects like last year's Aquis Date Upcycle models. The Hölstein-based company's latest effort in this arena springs from a collaboration with Cervo Volante, a Swiss leather goods manufacturer that uses sustainable deer-skin leather to produce footwear and accessories. These skins, by-products derived from the culling of wild deer populations in Switzerland and which would otherwise have gone to waste, now find a new use as straps in the Oris Big Crown X Cervo Volante, a series of three new timepieces based on the popular Big Crown Pointer Date model.
The watches all adopt the familiar look of the Big Crown Pointer Date, a mainstay of Oris's portfolio since 1938, with a multi-part stainless steel case measuring 38 mm in diameter and featuring the tapered lugs, coin-edged bezel, and oversized, fluted, screw-down crown that lends the aviation-inspired Big Crown collection its name. The gradient gray, green, and blue dial options, says Oris, are inspired by the Alps, and the dials host the hallmark vintage-styled handset and central "pointer date" hand that indicates the date on a numerical scale on the periphery.
Through the screwed caseback with its sapphire exhibition window, you get a glimpse of the movement, Oris Caliber 754, based on the Sellita SW200-1 and customized with Oris’s familiar red-centered, bidirectional rotor. The self-winding movement stores a power reserve of 38 hours and is equipped with an instant date corrector as well as a stop-seconds function for easy time synchronization.
What sets these watches apart from the plethora of other Big Crown editions are the straps, in dark brown, oak brown and cognac, made from Cervo Volante deer leather, which differ from other leather straps in that they maintain imperfections incurred over a deer's life that would have otherwise made them unusable and discarded by many companies. The straps, like Cervo Volante's hard-wearing footwear, are finished at Switzerland's two remaining tanneries, both of which use 100 percent vegetable tanning processes. As a bonus, the watches come with a pouch and card holder made of the same material.
The Oris Big Crown X Cervo Volante, in all three of its iterations, retails for $2,800 and is neither a limited edition nor a "one time deal," as Oris has promised that it will continue to work with Cervo Volante on further projects and initiatives in the watchmaker's "Change for the Better" campaign.
