Watches claim their aesthetic inspirations from a myriad of sources, from the Winchester Cathedral’s vaults recreated on the dial of Parmigiani Fleurier’s Toric Quaestor Winchester, to Perrelet’s Turbine Poker with poker card motifs. However, you don’t often hear of watches themselves being a muse for the fashion industry, so imagine our surprise when we came across Speedometer Official, the company which elevated desk diving to a whole new level.

Speedometer Official is an Italian company that was founded just last year. The brand debuted with a single product line, the “Unidirectional Bezel” bangle, which came in several colours.  As you can guess, the bangle is inspired by dive watch bezels, and has the distinctive markings and fluting of the latter. Made in Italy from nickel-free marine steel, these bangles are one-size-fits-all and have become quite a hit, with quite some press coverage and celebrity endorsements. Consequently, additional versions have been added to the collection, including one in pink gold and set with precious stones for a touch of luxury. From what we can see on various social media platforms, people tend to live vacariously by wearing them as is, or matching their dive watch with a corresponding bangle of the same colour.

A closer examination of these bangles, however, reveals some imperfect…borrowing, to put mildly. While dive watch bezels tend to separate the 15- or 20-minute markers conspicuously with a different colour for divers to calculate elapsed time underwater, the bangles here do so haphazardly, sometimes to maintain symmetry.

Riding on this wave of success, Speedometer Official’s founder and designer Marco Gatti has transplanted the “concept” to other products. This includes a polo shirt with the same visual motif printed on its upturned collar, and a range of six leather belts with a watch bezel in lieu of a normal buckle. If nothing else, these apparels and accessories are visually striking. We’d like to have other parts of a watch emulated if possible though. Who’s up for pants with helium (or methane) escape valves?