The Farer Automatic is a British-designed smart watch

Sweet. I can haz new watchface, though?

Heavens above. Everything for you is so temporary, isn’t it? To be skinned, or recoded, or discarded without a thought. Well, check your mirrors and apply the brakes, Hot Rod. This is no ghastly plastic smart-tat – this watch has been crafted.

Designed by the creative Britfolk at Farer watches, the colours have been chosen at birth, nourished and then carefully brought together over a succession of Sunday dances. There is some choice, however. Three colourways: Hopewell, above, is the darkest, with Beagle and Endurance coming in a little lighter. All are a modestly unisexual 39.5mm diameter.

• 

• 

• 

Three? Do I get them all?

No. You’ll have to choose one and stick with it. Although in a worryingly modern twist, Farer has specified its leather straps with an easy-off spring clasp, so you could play a little choppy-changey with another 20mm strap, if the mood took you. While we’re looking at the back, your eye cannot have failed to take in the spinny mechanical gubbins – this is Farer’s first self-winding Automatic watch.

Oh no, those mechanical watches are always super spendy.

Always? Even Greg Rutherford would struggle to jump to such assumptions. No, despite only being a few years old Farer has managed to get its foot in the door down at Swissland, sourcing an ETA 2824-2 movement, and thusly the right to print the hallowed ‘Swiss Made’ legend on the dial. Yet it’s kept the price to mortal levels. A Farer Automatic, in any (but not all) of its three colours, can be yours for £875. Yes, you could have a smartwatch (or three) for that money, but that won’t be made in Switzerland now, will it?