Tom Ford's new Ocean Watch
Sustainability is becoming a very important word in the luxury sector. More and more brands are seeking to make something which is not just good for the customer, but for the wider world as well.
“Ethical luxury is the greatest luxury of all,” according to Tom Ford, and the style maestro is putting his belief into action with the latest release from Tom Ford Timepieces.
The Tom Ford Ocean Plastic Timepiece is “made from 100% ocean plastic”. In real terms, this means that all of its plastic components, from the strap to parts of the case, are made from plastic reclaimed from beaches and oceans around the world.
This means, according to Tom Ford, that each watch is the equivalent of removing 35 bottles of plastic waste from the ocean.
As you might expect from a Tom Ford product, the watch itself looks beautiful, with sleek, black lines and a simple contrasting dial. Of course, the watch is not literally 100% ocean plastic in any sense. The case is made from ocean plastic with a case-back and crown both fashioned from stainless steel and plated in black diamond-like carbon. The crown also features ocean plastic inlays and luminova numerals and hands.
The top of the watch is sapphire crystals with anti-reflective coating; the whole piece is 40mm round and is water resistant to 10m. The sleek strap is fashioned from ocean plastic, with a stainless steel buckle and the packaging is – as you might expect – recyclable.
As part of a drive to do better for the world’s oceans, Tom Ford has also partnered with 52HZ, the podcast by ocean environmentalists Lonely Whale, to launch the Tom Ford Plastic Innovation Prize. This seeks to speed up the search for a replacement for thin-film plastic, which is one of the scourges of oceans worldwide.
A single watch is not going to change the world but bringing reclaimed plastic into the luxury watch sector and normalising it as a product will be a step in the right direction. If luxury brands can prove the worth of reclaimed plastic, then the rest of the market is more likely to follow.
I’ll leave the final words to the man himself, Tom Ford: “Sustainability is a key issue in our lives right now. In particular, the amount of ocean plastic that we are generating is perhaps taking the greatest toll on our environment of all.”
The Tom Ford 002 Ocean Plastic Watch is currently available for pre-order, costing £895.
Photos courtesy of Tom Ford