Story & heritage

The Cape Cod was created in 1991 by Henri d'Origny — the designer responsible for many of the house's scarves and ties — who set a square dial inside a rectangular case with softly rounded corners. That geometric puzzle, square within rectangle, became the watch's signature and the house's defining timepiece.

Its lugs were drawn from the Chaîne d'Ancre, Robert Dumas's 1938 anchor-chain motif, anchoring the watch firmly in Hermès' own vocabulary. In 1998 Martin Margiela, then designing the house's ready-to-wear, added the leather strap that wraps twice around the wrist — the double-tour — and the Cape Cod became an icon.

Materials & craft

The Cape Cod is made by La Montre Hermès in Bienne, Switzerland — the house's watchmaking arm, established in 1978. The case is steel (with gold and diamond-set versions), housing quartz or in-house automatic movements, and carries the house's distinctive numerals on a clean Hermès Paris dial.

The double-tour strap is saddle-stitched leather made in the house's own ateliers — the same craft as its bags — looping twice around the wrist and fastening with a buckle. Single-strap and metal-bracelet versions are also produced.

How to choose & style

The small 31mm on a double-tour strap is the signature look — the leather wrapping twice reads as much like a bracelet as a watch. Brown and étoupe straps are the warm classics; black is the sharpest. The square-in-rectangle face keeps it unmistakably Hermès, and the saddle-stitched leather ties it back to the house's leather heritage rather than to conventional watchmaking.