Let’s get 2022 off to a good start! To start the year I’m introducing a new feature in my blog, which I’m going to call “in the spotlight”.
Once a month I’ll write a blog post about a specific leather that I rate highly and want to recommend. I’ll give you a little background on the leather and tell you why I like it so much (i.e. why I’ve chosen it). I’ll put it all together as a mini-review with the title “in the spotlight” and publish it here. I aim to have a different leather in the spotlight every month going forward, and each one will come with a time-limited promo offer, saving you money if you order a strap from the leather “in the spotlight” during the calendar month.
So, to start the ball rolling I’ll open with a leather which is one of my personal favourites and one that has become the go-to strap for my Panerai Zero over the last 6 months or so. In the spotlight for January 2022 is Horween Essex.
Horween Essex
As the name would suggest, Horween Essex is another leather produced by the Horween Leather Company, of Chicago. I started using Horween leather back in 2009 when I first began working with shell cordovan. Since then I’ve added several of their other leathers to my store. Over the years I’ve been making straps I’ve come to consider Horween as one of the best tanneries in the world. Certainly in my experience the leather they produce is always of a very high quality. I decided to try Essex last year and I’m very glad I did. As soon as I started working with the sample I received I realised how special a leather it is, and the customer feedback since it launched on my site has been 100% positive.
Horween Essex is a fully vegetable tanned leather that is wonderfully soft and pliable from the first time you strap it on your wrist. It’s a bovine leather that Horween puts through the same tanning process as it does it’s shell codovan leathers, and the result is something seriously good. Buttery soft from the start it makes a watch strap that is so comfortable to wear that you will forget you are wearing it. It is a pale cream colour that goes beautifully with a black dial watch, and being a veg tanned leather it builds patina quickly. When I’m using it to make a watch strap for one of my watches I always pair it with natural linen thread (for me, that’s the best combination), but I’ve had customers more adventurous than me combine it with grey and pale blue stitching to good effect too.
As you might imagine, I tend to swap straps on my watches often, but Horween Essex has become the main strap for my Panerai zero. Being such a simple watch, I find the zero tends to work best with a contrasting strap, and the light cream colour of Horween Essex just seems to lift it to another level. It works so well with a simple black dial that when I made a strap for my 3646 homage watch it was the leather I chose. Horween Essex is definitely one of my all time personal favourite leathers and comes highly recommended.
A promo for January 2022 and the T’s & C’s
During the entire month of January 2022 you can use the promo code ESSEX20 when ordering to get £20 off the cost of a Horween Essex strap. Simply enter ESSEX20 into the “coupon code” box at the top of the checkout page and click “apply coupon” – doing so will reduce the cost of your Horween Essex strap by £20 (my website will recalculate the total cost automatically).
The coupon code ESSEX20 is active from now until midnight (GMT) on Monday 31st January 2022. This offer is applicable to online orders placed in January 2022 where the promo code is used at checkout, and applies only to straps made from Horween Essex leather.