Bamford & Sons: Pimp my Rolex

Following on from yesterday's drubbing of the Fragment Design Rolex Air King, I feel I should really say a few words about the people that customised it.

Bamford & Sons is a bespoke menswear brand which is probably better known for what it likes to do to Rolex watches. The Bamford treatment begins with the application of "military grade Physical Vapour Deposition". This essentially blackens the steel casing and bracelet, leaving it coated with a "flawless, diamond hard" tint.

The rest is up to you, the customer. Bamford can supply its own custom details for the dial and markers, or you can come up with something entirely unique to yourself, which I'm guessing is what happened in the case of the Fujiwara Fragment Air King.

Mind you, he did a far better job with the Submariner for Sophnet.

The whole Bamford pimping process doesn't come cheap. As a rough guide you can expect it to add about £4,000 to the book price of a Rolex.

The result is a matter of opinion. Being coloured, the Bamford watches bare a passing resemblance to the wannabe brands like Toywatch, or that foul Monocle x Beams effort which they still haven't managed to shift.

I probably wouldn't make too much fuss if I was given one though.

Bamford watch department: The Rolex pimpers

You might remember a post or two a while back on the watch department of Bamford and Sons, which specialises in taking your bog standard Rolex and doing stuff that you wouldn't necessarily consider adviseable to them. Like painting them black. Or colouring the markers in pink.

Due to the infinite amount of possible designs available, this customising is often quite a hit a miss affair. One design might look amazing, while another could resemble something a middle school pupil might wear.

If you doubt that a Rolex can be ruined by this process, take a look at the Fragment design abomination, or that Colette one on the right. Yes, that is a Rolex, and to make matters worse, that custom blue paintjob will probably set you back another £5k on a standard model.

Bamford is clearly quite proud of what it does, so it's made a video.

This is your opportunity to see how bad this can actually get. That said, you might like it. Who am I to really say? It's a question of taste, after all.

If you do like it and you fancy getting one done for me, I wouldn't say no.