AETHER + Bamford London D-300 Watch
A Horological Collab From Across The Pond
Meet the AETHER + Bamford D-300, a watch made the way we make our outerwear: tough, technical, and refined down to the last detail. After the success of our first collaboration with Bamford London in 2023, we've partnered with the London-based watchmaker once again, this time setting out to create an ultra limited-edition timepiece that's even more in line with AETHER's signature design philosophy.
For Bamford London founder George Bamford, coming back for a second collaboration was an easy call. "I feel so lucky to be working with you guys again because I've long been a huge fan. I love the quality, I love the craftsmanship, and I love the stellar attention to detail, whether that's the small details on your garments, such as the stitching and hardware, or your marketing and overall aesthetic," says Bamford London founder George Bamford.
We chose Bamford's D-300 as the basis for this collaboration for several reasons. Its ceramic case is built around a titanium core and paired with a ceramic bezel, a screw-down titanium crown, and a reliable automatic movement. Just as important, its clean, industrial design proved to be the perfect blank canvas for us to customize.
"It was crucial for us to create a timepiece that met AETHER's exacting standards for quality, craftsmanship, material selection, and performance. The D-300 ticks all those boxes, while also giving our in-house design team a clean slate to create a truly unique product that's distinctly AETHER," says AETHER Co-Founder Jonah Smith.
The result is an understated yet eye-catching design: a blacked-out colorway set against grey elements on the dial and bezel, with five-minute markers picked out in our signature Summit Blue. That contrast lets the watch keep its blacked-out look while staying highly legible, helped further by glowing Swiss Super-LumiNova® on the dial and three generously applied layers of anti-reflective coating on the inside of the sapphire crystal.
Built for adventure, the D-300 moves seamlessly between everyday city life and the outdoors, in and out of the water. It comes with a rubber strap and a heavy-duty nylon strap, complete with custom AETHER- and Bamford-branded hardware. Each watch also arrives in a floating, crushproof case with two slots: one holds the watch on its standard rubber strap, and the other holds the extra nylon strap.
These changes to Bamford's standard D-300 bring our version fully in line with AETHER's adventure-ready DNA and overall design ethos. The watch is the horological equivalent of a piece of our technical outerwear: sleek, elegantly styled, well crafted, high-performance, and extremely versatile. And, as with our garments, it's being made in very small numbers to guarantee a level of world-class craftsmanship and quality control that large-scale manufacturing can't match.
"We achieved what we set out to do: build an adventure-ready timepiece that's as tough as it is good-looking. With help from Bamford and a development process that let us meticulously refine the watch over more than half a dozen prototypes, we feel we really stuck the landing on our latest collaboration," says AETHER Co-Founder Palmer West.
Produced in extremely limited numbers, the AETHER + Bamford D-300 Limited-Edition Watch is available now.
