CHAOREN: belts built around a track instead of holes

CHAOREN makes belts, and one decision sits underneath everything else about the range: the fit should be continuous rather than stepped. A punched belt offers five or seven places to stop. A ratchet strap offers about thirty.

That difference is invisible in a photograph and obvious by four in the afternoon, when a waist is not the size it was at breakfast. One notch on a punched belt is an inch. An inch is the whole distance between comfortable and not.

So the mechanism came first and the rest of the lineup arranged itself around it. The straps are cut to length by the person wearing them. The buckles come off without tools, which is what makes the cut possible. And because the buckle comes off, a worn strap is a replaceable part rather than the end of a belt.

The other half of the range does not use the mechanism at all. Pin buckles for wardrobes where nothing should need explaining, webbing for work, elastic and braid for waists that move. A brand that only made one kind of belt would be a brand telling people their wardrobe is wrong.

Width is the number the studio argues about most and the one customers check least. A 35 mm strap sits in the loops of dress trousers. A 38 mm strap does not, or it does and looks wrong. It is stamped on every buckle in millimetres, so that is how it is printed on every card here.

The CHAOREN studio designs straps, chooses leathers and specifies buckles. What we can tell you is what a belt is cut from, what waist it covers, how wide it is and where it will disappoint you. There is a federal guide about the word leather that names belts specifically, and it is the reason our cards say full-grain or genuine leather where the maker publishes a layer and say only leather where nobody does.

The disappointments are worth printing rather than burying. A ratchet strap is cut with scissors and there is no way back from cutting too much. A 35 mm buckle will not take a 38 mm strap however similar they look. Elastic relaxes after a couple of years. Saying so costs a sale now and again and saves a return every time.

Payment, delivery and returns happen at checkout with our retail partner rather than with us. If a belt arrives wrong, their returns process is the fastest route, and you can write to the studio as well. Somebody here reads it.