Our Panerai Luminor Marina gets the DaLuca Straps treatment
By The Prodigal Fool, published on 19 July 2010
Two days ago we were in Paris marveling at the beautiful and sophisticated range of luxury straps at ABP. And fear not, we’ll be bringing you a full report of the Prodigal Meetup very shortly. But today we wanted to take you to what is in many ways completely the opposite end of the watch strap spectrum: welcome to the world of DaLuca Straps.
We’ve been intrigued by DaLuca since reading about them on Fratellowatches months ago. Based out in California, Daniel Luczak creates one of a kind straps from reclaimed vintage leather – much of it from old ammunition bags and so on. The straps are deliberately aged and weathered.
Why did this appeal? Well, to understand that, you need to understand why we wanted a Panerai in the first place.
We’ve already told you how we ended up ordering the Panerai but our real interest in the brand started when we chanced upon a photo of an original Panerai Luminor from the 1940s with the Angelus 8-day movement and small seconds dial at 9 o’clock, the model that the infamous Luminor 1950 limited edition – and indeed all modern Luminors – is based on. The image of this bold, simple watch design – so purposeful, so devoid of frills or indeed anything to distract the owner from the sheer utility of the thing – on a strap so distressed, used and weathered that you wanted it to be able to talk so it could tell you the thousand fascinating stories of its adventures – just entranced us. OK, forget hyperbole: it just looked very cool. And that’s how we started to look for a Panerai.
So, when we finally got our hands on one (we chose the stock PAM111 because, discarding the crazy expensive and impossible to find limited editions, it was the closest model at the time to the 1940s original we were so enamoured with) we wanted to make it look as close as possible to that vintage piece we’d fallen for.
After a few months of jumping in the sea with the strap on, leaving it out in the sun, and having Baby Fool chew on it, we realised that ageing the stock Panerai strap that our watch came on wasn’t going to cut it. Or at least was going to take far longer than we could wait. We set out to find a vintage replacement.
It wasn’t long before we stumbled upon DaLuca Straps. We read Fratello’s review, perused Dan’s website and then finally settled on a model called the Trench Warfare (you can’t fault DaLuca’s fantastic names for its straps – each as inventive as the next)
Changing the strap was a piece of cake. Fans of the Italian brand will know that their watches all come with a replacement rubber strap and the screwdriver needed to swap them straight out of the box. Indeed, to our eyes, that’s one of the key selling points about Panerai ownership. You can’t really take Panerais very seriously and so somehow they lend themselves to a lot of strap swapping. It’s all part of the fun.
The DaLuca strap fits perfectly, comes with its own DaLuca buckle (slightly larger – if that’s possible – than the standard Panerai buckle) and was fitted to our PAM in a matter of a minute or two. It’s well made and has a reassuring heft to it. Our only criticism of the build is that there seems to be a line near the top where the strap meets the lugs that is slightly weaker or thinner than the rest of the strap. As a result, rather then bending uniformly to fit your wrist, the strap ‘folds’ at this one point, creating an uneven curvature to the strap. A deliberate design feature? Something that will disappear as the rest of the strap settles in? Perhaps.
How it looks is of course a matter of opinion. To our eyes, its rugged, distressed appearance suits the butch Panerai perfectly. With hindsight we would have gone with a slightly lighter colour – the brown looks almost black in some parts of the leather – but that’s really our only complaint.
The range of straps on offer at DaLuca is impressive. Head on over and check them out. We certainly expect ours to share a lot of wrist time with the PAM. Well, until that is we uncover a pot of gold behind our sofa or an oil well in our garden and a Luminor 1950 for sale.
Our Panerai Luminor Marina gets the DaLuca Straps treatment
Two days ago we were in Paris marveling at the beautiful and sophisticated range of luxury straps at ABP. And fear not, we’ll be bringing you a full report of the Prodigal Meetup very shortly. But today we wanted to take you to what is in many ways completely the opposite end of the watch [...]
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12 Responses to “Our Panerai Luminor Marina gets the DaLuca Straps treatment”
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What an incredible piece! I disagree with @Sraight-Six, it is very convincing to the eye!
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Thanks Dennis! Straight-Six is notoriously down on Panerai. Poor chap doesn’t know what he’s missing.
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Straight-Six
20 July 2010
On the contrary! I’m delighted not to own one.
The Panerai just looks like a toy to my eyes, a bulging, bright, shiny plaything that clearly enjoys impeccable heritage but doesn’t manage to translate that into a watch I would shell out big bucks for.
You see, the Fool and I considered buying matching Panerais to mark our Great American Run – the idea being to engrave the date and distance covered to mark the seminal event. But the Run was very shabbily organized and entertaining only thanks to the scenery, the scale of the US, the In-N-Out burgers, the Audi A4 cabrio we drove in and a drunk Belgian pervert with a gravelly voice called Albert Jaeger…
The Panerai leaves me as unimpressed as the organizers of the Run. So, not an event worth marking, and not a watch worth buying in my book. But I do like the strap…
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Great review…I hope you enjoy your new strap. If anyone needs a custom made strap, please let me know. My turnaround time is generally 1-2 business days and shipping (domestic) is always free.
-Daniel
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[...] our iMac’s desktop at the end of the week and found these photos that we’d taken for our Panerai post of a few days ago but not used in the end, we thought we’d share them with you [...]
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Congratulations DaLuca . The straps are beautiful, I liked very much.
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Santo
23 August 2010
Panerais are beautiful time pieces. Good on you for dressing it up with something else. I myself have purchased several really beautiful straps from another strap maker, Bas and Lokes. I ordered one at first to see the quality and was blown away. I have since ordered 6 more and really love them. Excellent craftsmanship and loved their customer service. I think they are supposed to be releasing a few straps soon. I can’t wait to see those. Their site is http://www.basandlokes.com if you don’t already know about them.
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Thanks. I checked out their site. The straps look nice – they’re about a third of the price of DaLuca though so can’t help wondering whether the quality is different.
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JoshG
24 December 2010
Read the article. Great watch, rubbish straps. I agree with a previous poster, Santo, about Bas and Lokes. The quality is actually superb. I own several of their straps and I have tried Daniel’s straps too and I am absolutely amazed that he charges so much for such poor work and supremely sad craftsmanship. I recommend Bas and Lokes for sure. Good stuff.
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Good to hear Josh. Thanks for the comment.
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Breitling, old friend, welcome back: The Navitimer Calibre 01 Limited Edition « The Prodigal Guide
12 October 2010
[...] Navitimer with a transparent caseback. Gimmick? Perhaps, but one that we have grown to love on our PAM111 and we have no doubt we’ll love it just as much [...]
Straight-Six
19 July 2010
Looks delightfully distressed, Mr. Fool, and a step up from the standard piece of skin.
I totally agree that the Panerai is somehow more affected and influenced by the straps owners fit them with than most other watches. The comment about not taking them too seriously is indeed correct.
And our visit to ABP in Paris on Saturday confirmed that you can experiment across an enormous spectrum of watch hides and types in order to make your Panerai more military buzz-cut or playboy modern. All good fun.
Just wish the watch itself was more convincing to my eyes…