Nato Vintage Style Monopezzo military watch strap: the military one-piece reimagined in Roman leather
On its product page, the Roman workshop Nato Vintage Style presents its Monopezzo through the sporting elegance that popular memory associates with Paul Newman. Yet the strap has a more martial lineage. Cut from a single band of leather, it echoes an architecture that the American and British armed forces adopted long before it became a style accessory: the one-piece strap, traceable from the olive drab webbing approved for the A-11 watch to the G10 standardised in 1973, by way of the British A.F.0210 of 1945. Emilio Colonna, who spent three decades buying and selling watches, transposes this principle into vegetable-tanned leather, aged with beeswax and hand-stitched. It is priced at €145.
The one-piece strap, a field solution before it was a style
Before adorning the wrists of tool watch enthusiasts, the single strap passed beneath the case answered a prosaic question: how to stop a soldier losing his watch? Threaded between the two lugs, the strap runs under the caseback and joins both sides without a break, so that the watch stays on the wrist even if one lug breaks, held by the other. The American and British forces used these fabric straps from the mid-twentieth century, if not earlier, and their presence in British aviation earned them the nickname RAF strap.
The olive drab webbing of the A-11
On the American side, the starting point is the A-11, produced during the Second World War by Elgin, Waltham and Bulova in tens of thousands of examples. Its manual, drawn up by the War Department, specified that the strap had to be an olive drab webbing strap, in one or two pieces. The watch itself, typically 32 mm in diameter and fitted with pierced 16 mm lugs, went well beyond the US Army: the RAF wore it under the designation 6B/234, and it also equipped the Canadian and Soviet air forces.
The A.F.0210, a British Army replacement from 1945
In the United Kingdom, the Ministry of Defence introduced in 1945 a one-piece webbing strap intended for military watches and compasses, the A.F.0210, listed in inventories under the heading “A6/AF0210: STRAP, WRIST, INSTRUMENT”. British watches of the period had fixed lugs. During and after the war, the RAF issued its pilots watches fitted on a pigskin strap sewn onto the lugs. When one needed replacing in the field, the Army supplied the A.F.0210, which slipped on without tools or disassembly. Pilots, for their part, had a separate official replacement, the 6B/169, a two-piece leather strap with clip-on ends. The A.F.0210 remained in service until 1980, under the number W10/6645-99-910-1003 at the end of its career.
1973, the G10 enters the standard
The strap known today as the NATO was officially born on 30 November 1973, in the British standard Def Stan 66-15 titled “Strap, Wrist Watch”. The regulation model is a strap of 20 mm Admiralty Grey nylon, with a buckle and keepers in chromed brass, with heat-sealed rather than stitched joints. Its G10 name comes from the G1098, or G10, form that servicemen filled in to obtain one, while the NATO name derives from its NATO stock number: 6645-99-124-2986 for the Army and Navy, 6645-99-527-7059 for the RAF. Def Stan 66-47 took over in 2001, and this timeline dispels a common confusion: the striped strap on Sean Connery’s Submariner in Dr. No could not have been a G10.
Emilio Colonna, thirty years of watches before leather
Nato Vintage Style, shortened to N.V.S., is a small boutique-workshop located at Via Scandriglia 12, in Rome. Its owner, Emilio Colonna, spent most of the last thirty years buying and selling watches from major brands, whether modern, pre-owned or vintage. From this he has kept a method that runs counter to mass production: the leather, colour and patina of a strap are decided according to the watch that will wear it. The raw material does not vary, since the workshop uses only pit vegetable-tanned leathers, with the rest (choice of hide, stitching colour, ageing with tinted beeswax) discussed with the customer. The house name pays tribute to the NATO strap, which the workshop presents as originating from a military specification for watches with fixed lugs, and which it offers in leather under the name NATO Classic, at €95.
A single band and two hand-stitched diamonds
The Monopezzo lives up to its Italian name: it is cut from a single band of leather, cut out, aged, stitched then waxed by hand. To hold the watch in place, the workshop adds to this base two diamond shapes cut from the same leather, themselves hand-stitched. The product page does not specify whether the band runs beneath the case in the manner of regulation straps, and N.V.S. claims no military lineage: the stated reference remains Paul Newman. The workshop offers this model in eight leather shades, from russet cognac to near-black nubuck, including finishes resembling English webbing or saddlery leather; two of them bear a name with military overtones, but the workshop attaches no historical meaning to them, and nothing warrants reading one into them.
Sizes, lead times and place in the range
The strap can be ordered in lug widths of 18, 20, 22 and 24 mm, always with a 20 mm buckle, and fits wrists from 150 to 195 mm. For the two largest widths, the workshop asks customers to state the watch's diameter in the order notes. Manufacturing only begins once the order is placed: the product page announces seven working days, while a banner on the site mentions two weeks to make and deliver. Priced at €145 including tax, the Monopezzo sits within a catalogue that also includes the Vintage Classic and the Racing at €125, as well as the California Rugged at €175.
From damp nylon to aviators' leather
Replacing canvas or nylon with leather is no betrayal. All-leather NATO and ZULU straps have in fact appeared for those who dislike the feel of damp nylon against the skin. More importantly, military history itself offers a precedent, since the RAF was already issuing leather to its pilots while the textile strap served as a field replacement. The Monopezzo brings these two lineages together, the one-piece construction of troop straps and the leather of aviators' watches. It remains a style accessory: nothing links N.V.S. to a military contract, and this strap is in no way a regulation issue item.
Nato Vintage Style's Monopezzo: the military strap reworked in Roman leather!
Military straps were never designed to please. They had to hold firm, be changed quickly and survive a failed lug, and it is precisely this quartermaster's logic that now gives them a second life, far from kit stores and issue forms. The Monopezzo illustrates this shift: a shape born of stock numbers and standards is now hand-shaped in a workshop where the hide is chosen while looking at the dial. That N.V.S. invokes Paul Newman rather than the RAF changes nothing about the object's genealogy, which traces back to the olive drab webbing and grey bands of years of service. For the military watch enthusiast, this strap is a reminder that an accessory can carry a history without claiming the uniform, and that between regulation nylon and aged leather, the boundary has less to do with function than with the way one tells the story of what sits on the wrist.
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Editor: Éric Barse
Journalist, entrepreneur, and founder of the websites www.cafe-racer-only.com and www.scooter-3-roues.com, Eric Barse divides his time between his passions: motorcycles, travel, and watches. A graduate of the Saint-Cyr military academy and the 2nd RPIMA (Parachute Regiment) before pursuing a career in communications and digital media, he has a true passion for authentic watches that have accompanied his two-wheeled adventures for many years, from the Indian Ocean to Africa and Latin America!
