Time for change: Oris Big Crown x Cervo Volante

Oris kicks off a partnership with sustainable leather manufacturer Cervo Volante with an eco-friendly take on its Big Crown

Watches & Jewellery 17 Jan 2022

With watch brands increasingly making moves towards more eco-friendly products, there’s often a focus on pioneering and technically advanced new materials that reduce, reuse and recycle. However, sometimes solutions can equally be found close to home, rooted in traditional techniques that have been at the core of manufacturing for centuries. 

Oris’s new collaboration with sustainable deer leather manufacturer Cervo Volante is a case in point, the latest in the watchmaker’s long-running commitment towards playing its part in protecting the future of the planet. Every year around 15,000 wild red deer are culled in Switzerland, a necessary and highly regulated process used to manage the animal’s population and the surrounding countryside. For years very little was made of the natural by-products this created, and in 2017 Cervo Volante was founded to transform the otherwise wasted skins into functional, hard-wearing and beautiful leather shoes and accessories. 

The brainchild of Kadri Vunder Fontana, a biotechnology engineer and businesswoman, and Conny Thiel-Egenter, a biologist specialising in wildlife and habitat management, the natural world and its preservation has been at the heart of the business from its very beginnings. The skins, which would otherwise be burned, are not the product of farming. As a result, they keep the imperfections that reflect the life of the deer. While many companies would normally discard them on this basis, instead the most is made of the unique character it lends the final product.  Keeping things local, Cervo Volante has also enlisted the help of Switzerland’s last two remaining tanneries, both of which use 100 per cent vegetable-tanning processes. 

For Oris, the company has produced a set of handsome straps, which get their first outing on the Big Crown Pointer Date watch in a trio of designs with differently coloured gradient dials that take their inspiration from alpine hues. And in a fitting finishing touch, they also come with a pouch and card holder produced in the same leather. As the debut of a partnership designed with longevity in mind, there’s more to look forward to from the duo in future releases. 

oris.ch