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Hi strap lovers. I wanted to share some photos of a strap I built for my good customer Mike. This fabulous Alligator is called Saint Lucia and is from our premium France Croco Alligator collection. Unfortunately, these hides have completely been sold out for a while now, but these photos are so fine, that I can’t resist showing them off.
Many of our Alligator Hides, especially the from France Croco are one of a kind, and so as a result, we may only ever be able to offer 10 to 12 straps of these particular colors. Typically once or twice a year, Andrea and I make a visit to the France Croco Warehouse in Milan to look through their skins in order to find new and unique colors. These hides represent Overruns from batches made for larger luxury goods makers, prototypes and show pieces used for display at leather trade fairs, etc. France Croco’s minimum order requirement is too large for us to have any of these hides produced just for us within our materials budget. Unfortunately, we cannot invest 10K Euros plus and just one color and finish of Alligator. Of course, the upside for our customers is that their straps made from these limited availability color and finish makes their straps vanishingly rare. The downside for us is that a color/finish that is in much higher demand, remains unfulfilled. The lesson for our customers is that if you see a color/finish in our France Croco Alligator collection that you like, don’t hesitate to make your order right away, or it may be gone forever.
Mike’s strap was made to fit his great looking PAM190 and features a beautiful Mammoth Ivory buckle (sadly, these are also no longer available) from FineWatchBuckles.com. We do however have a number of exotic wood buckles available (mostly in 24mm widths) that are truly beautiful as well. This strap was, of course, hand saddle stitched with our bronze/beige French milled linen thread. and features nice thick padding at the lugs
Here are a handful of Higher definition photos that I took of this strap before shipping it to the customer:
I really love this SuperMatte Teju Lizard both as an upper and as a luxury lining (as her):
I really love if possible to cut the keepers from one piece of Alligator and match the scale pattern as I have done here. These keepers are lined with the same blue SuperMatte Teju Lizard leather as the strap:
Stunning Mammoth buckle with Caramel colored mineralization (I so wish these were still available). This buckle was matched with a very cool looking tang made from Damascus steel:
