For Nawaz Razaq, founder of London bespoke atelier INRO, the relationship between a collector and a watch can evolve long after it leaves the manufacture. A different strap can certainly change its proportions and comfort, but it can also give an existing watch an entirely new emotional significance. “The strap is the bridge between the watch and the client,” he says, arguing that its importance remains surprisingly underplayed.
Nawaz sees two primary reasons collectors come to him: emotional connection and wearability. Someone may love a watch but not the way it sits on the wrist, how it feels, or how it expresses their personality. Increasingly, he says, collectors are also more considered about their acquisitions. Rather than simply accumulating watches, they are thinking carefully about what they own and how they wear them. Ironically, “it’s actually harder for them to find a watch strap than to find the watch”.
The Human Connection
INRO operates at a deliberately small scale. The three-person team produces around 30 straps a month, many for repeat clients, with commissions beginning with a consultation at the atelier tucked behind The Ritz in St James’s.
Nawaz’s international clientele will go considerable distances for that personal service. He recalls encountering one collector in five different cities over six months – Dubai, Geneva, Milan, Paris, and London.
However, he is selective about the commissions he accepts. A new client will generally start with a single strap, while even established collectors are limited to 30 a year. For him, the relationship matters as much as the commission, beginning with a simple question: why does this particular watch matter to you? “The first thing I do when I speak to clients is ask them what their story is,” he says. “What’s the connection? What’s the story with the watch?”
That philosophy has an unlikely origin. Nawaz was previously a barrister before moving into bespoke leather goods with his brother. A pivotal call came from the late vintage jeweller Harry Fane, who approached him for help with straps for vintage Cartier watches. Over roughly a decade, Nawaz refined the precision required to fit early clasps without today’s micro-adjustment systems, learning to account for wrist profile, bone structure, and the way a clasp follows the curve of a wrist. His experience with vintage Cartier became the foundation for the work he now applies across brands.
Who Is More Adventurous?
While INRO’s clients come from the UK, Europe, the US, the Middle East, and beyond, Nawaz is wary of reducing taste to nationality. There are tendencies, however.
Middle Eastern clients can be bolder with colour and materials, he says, while UK and European clients tend towards greater discretion. Americans are particularly receptive to personal storytelling and craftsmanship.
The possibilities also extend well beyond conventional leather. One Saudi client, for example, wanted to transform a diamond-set Chopard originally fitted with a bracelet. She commissioned a burgundy grosgrain silk strap for her watch and a turquoise moiré silk version for her mother’s.
Some clients arrive precisely because a bracelet is preventing them from enjoying a watch. Fit may fall awkwardly between two links, or a bracelet may feel uncomfortable. Watches that have consequently been left unworn can return to the wrist once they’ve been through INRO’s hands.
INRO has an in-house jeweller and watchmaker, but Nawaz stresses that interventions must remain respectful of the original watch. “We do go bold, but also it’s got to sit within the parameters.”
From Botswana, With Love
One commission brings the philosophy particularly close to home for African readers. A businessman from Botswana, living in South Africa and travelling frequently between the two countries, bought a Girard-Perregaux because its blue, white, and black dial immediately reminded him of the Botswana flag.
The watch connected him to home. Its existing strap did not. What followed was a six-month conversation with INRO. Nawaz incorporated the colours through a black strap and sky-blue stitching but wanted another element that spoke specifically to Botswana. The answer was a diamond.
A small De Beers diamond was discreetly positioned on the keeper (the small loop that holds the loose end of the strap in place), where it could serve as a private reminder of the owner’s homeland. The point wasn’t conspicuous luxury. In fact, its discretion was fundamental. The detail existed primarily for the wearer.
That idea of private meaning recurs throughout Nawaz’s work. For a Scottish client in his early 70s, the challenge involved inheritance. The client had already given his son a special Patek Philippe for his 40th birthday and wanted another watch prepared for his daughter when she reached the same milestone.
INRO fitted it with silk and placed her father’s initials in real gold on the reverse of the strap – an intimate reminder of whose watch she would eventually wear.
Nawaz says he encounters stories like these weekly: watches being restored not simply mechanically but emotionally.
Sustainability Through Longevity
Material provenance is part of contemporary luxury, although Nawaz says responsible sourcing is now an established expectation rather than an occasional request. Materials used by the atelier are appropriately sourced; for the Botswana-inspired commission, for instance, the De Beers diamond was accompanied by certification. But there is another, perhaps more interesting, sustainability story here. It’s about keeping.
Nawaz says he is seeing collectors restore and reinterpret existing watches rather than automatically replacing them. An inherited watch can be adapted to a new wearer. A bracelet watch gathering dust can be transformed with a silk or leather strap. A timepiece associated with a parent can carry that history into another generation.
“People are always searching for individuality and that emotional connection,” he says.
Perhaps that is the most contemporary aspect of INRO’s old-world approach to craftsmanship. Luxury doesn’t necessarily require another acquisition. Sometimes it means looking again at what you already have.
A strap may be a relatively small part of a watch, but in Nawaz’s hands it can change who wears it, why they wear it, and, ultimately whether it gets worn at all.
