It’s looking more and more likely by the day that Apple is ditching that most premium of soft goods around its entire product line — leather. Now, as the Wonderlust iPhone 15 launch event is only a day and a chunk away, it’s become harder to buy one of the nicest (and most expensive) leather Apple products — the collaborative effort of high fashion brand Hermès and Apple itself, its gorgeous leather Apple Watch bands, have been pulled from the Hermès store.
We’ve already got an idea of what the iPhones’ new non-leather cases will look like thanks to a leak last week, but there’s no news as to what the Apple Watch bands could look like. Of course, this latest removal of a product line could mean more than just a shift to a different material — it could mean the end of the relationship between the two firms that’s been around since the Apple Watch Series 0.
Goodbye Apple leather, well, everything
Evidently Hermès removed the Apple Watch entirely from its website last year as well. Doesn't necessarily mean it isn't over. But guess it's not a new thing. https://t.co/BJJR6aTOav https://t.co/dmWzbrhEUZSeptember 11, 2023
As Parker Ortolani notes, all of the Apple Watch bands on the site have been removed leaving now just an ‘Oops!’ error message. Bereft of life, the page is no more, no longer offering the most premium of the Apple lineup.
If you still want to buy an Apple Watch Hermés the day before the newest Apple Watch is launched, then you’re in luck, given that you can still hop over to Apple’s site and drop an ungodly sum on a fashion piece that’s about to become outmoded.
No more leather — iMore’s take
Ok, let’s get this one thing out of the way first; this is highly unlikely to mean that the Series 8 is going to be the last Apple Watch to feature a collaborative Hermés model. Given that last year, the same thing happened as the Apple Watch line was pulled from the site around this same time, only for a new Apple Watch Hermés to be unveiled the day after, it’s likely to be the same thing this year. So don’t worry, Hermés fans, you will still likely be able to get a new one come the Series 9.
What is up in the air is what these new straps are going to look like; after all, we don’t know what the official Apple ones will resemble yet. The FineWoven iPhone case looks a little more like suede than the current leather cases, although there’s still no official imagery of that yet, so we don’t know for certain.
What is certain is that we’ll see what everything looks like tomorrow during the Apple Wonderlust event. Then, we’ll finally catch a glimpse of the iPhone 15 family, the Apple Watch Series 9, the Ultra 2, and, most pertinently here, the replacements for all of Apple’s leather goods.
