News

Seiko Upcycles Leather for the Latest Presage

Leather scrap to leather strap.

Seiko adds a new limited-edition to its line of affordable dress watch with the Presage Classic Series Upcycled Leather Strap that sports knurled bezel, golden-brown gradient dial, and with a leather strap made from shoe leather offcuts supplied by Regal, a Japanese shoemaker best known for its leather dress shoes.

Initial Thoughts

Though strange on the surface, the Seiko Presage and Regal tie-up makes sense. Both are affordable, solid offerings in their respective segments, and also distinctly Japanese. Notably, Regal is launching the saddle shoes that produced the offcuts later this week.

The watch itself is a good looking iteration of Seiko’s familiar entry-level dress watch. The bezel and smoked dial are a pleasing combination that set this apart from most Presage models.

Seiko didn’t mention the impetus for this collaboration in press materials; I suspect geography was a part. Regal builds its top of the line shoes in the town of Morioka, near Morioka Seiko Instruments, the heart of Seiko’s domestic mechanical watch production.

That proximity lends a lot of authenticity to the collaboration for me, and I wish it were part of Seiko’s messaging, though I understand most consumers don’t care. At the same time, Regal is little known outside Japan, but its shoes are a fixture in major Japanese department stores.

The transient nature of leather straps is arguably a shortcoming in watches like the new Presage, or the Kodo Constant Force Tourbillon at the other end of the price spectrum, where the strap is such an important part of the watch in the long run. But, the lack of drilled-through or quick release spring bars dissuades strap exchanges, and unlike the Godzilla-leather Kodo strap, a similar brown calfskin replacement should be easy to find.

Brown Leather and White Tea

For the leather, Seiko turned to Regal Shoe & Co., which supplied scrap leather offcuts from the brand’s saddle shoes. The long-running Japanese shoemaker is over a century old and its stores are a common sight in Tokyo.

Americans may recall a defunct Massachusetts-based shoe manufacturer of the same name, and the two are related. In 1961 the Brown Show Company (now Caleres) licensed the Regal brand to Japan Shoes Co., Ltd., which later bought the mark outright.

Seiko describes the light brown gradient dial as shiracha (しらちゃ) which translates as “white tea”. The tone became popular during the Bunsei Era – during the second half of the Edo period – in clothing and art. It is quite similar to the brown “Edo Silk” dial launched on the 36 mm SPB523 back in May, including the silk-like dial texture.

The gilt hands and indices pair well with the warm white tea dial base. Probably less welcome is “Automatic 3 Days” under the Presage signature.

Inside is the cal. 6R55 that does indeed have a power reserve of three days, or 72-hours (up from 70-hours in the 6R35) plus the usual accoutrements: stop seconds, hand winding, and a quickset date.

It is also equipped with a lightweight, skeletonised pallet fork, a feature once reserved for Hi-Beat Grand Seikos that has trickled down to the humble 6R family without fanfare.

The movement is quite thick (in excess of 5.0 mm) contributing to the watch’s tall profile. In all, the case is 13 mm tall, though much of that is in the sapphire crystal.

Excepting the rose-toned, beaded bezel, the case is as typical for the Presage Classic Series, and about 40 mm wide, with a compact 46 mm lug-to-lug span. It’s also protected by a clear Diashield coating to ward against scratches and scrapes.