Rolex Oysterflex: The Watch Strap That's Really A Bracelet

Among all of Rolex’s bracelet options, the Oysterflex is perhaps the most unconventional and arguably the most misunderstood. Now marking 10 years on the market, and encompassing attributes of both a sturdy steel bracelet and a supple rubber strap, the Oysterflex has gone from being a curious, one-off outlier on a niche Yacht-Master model to an integral element of some of the Crown’s most buzz-worthy timepieces of recent years. Here’s what you should know about it.

History of Rubber Watch Straps

The road to the Rolex Oysterflex bracelet really started with the invention of vulcanized rubber in 1839, attributed to chemist Charles Goodyear (below, whose name is now immortalized in the automotive world as a leading manufacturer of tires). Vulcanized rubber — a compound of natural rubber with other compounds, which offered enhanced resilience and pliability — was originally used in mostly industrial areas, as in the manufacture of o-rings, gaskets, and (of course) tires. The discovery of fluoroelastomers as an alternative to the difficult-to-source natural rubber led to the rise of synthetic rubbers that had even more advantages, such as resistance to water, oils, and temperature extremes. These rubbers found their way into more everyday products such as shoes, belts, and flooring, while also expanding further into applications in the automotive industry, for door seals, hoses, and other parts.

Synthetic rubber first emerged as an alternative for wristwatch straps in the 1950s, an era that not coincidentally also saw the rise in popularity of the so-called “tool watch,” i.e., watches that were built not just to be worn in social situations but in challenging conditions in which they would need to resist water, magnetism, and extreme temperatures— i.e., scuba diving, mountain climbing, and flying airplanes. Unsurprisingly to many who follow the history of the watch world, Rolex was one of the pioneers of using rubber to attach its watches to wrists. In the 1960s, the company — which already had a distinguished string of forward-looking innovations under its belt, including the waterproof Oyster case and the date-magnifying “Cyclops" lens, to name just a handful — began using the now-legendary Tropic strap, introduced in 1955 by a Swiss company of the same name, as an alternative to the familiar steel Oyster bracelet on its deep-diving Submariner. 

Photo: Chronocentric.com

The Tropic strap (yes, it’s a registered trademark, and thus capitalized) was made of rubber that was designed to be as soft, durable, and waterproof as possible for the era, and marketed as an OEM (Original Equipment Manufacture) alternative to the bracelets, as well as the leather and nylon straps, that were common on divers’ watches. Tropic straps were (and still are) recognized for their distinctive “basket weave” textured surface, and while Rolex did sell them directly to its own customers, the Crown wasn’t the only Swiss watch manufacturer that turned to Tropic for dive-watch bracelet alternatives: Blancpain, whose Fifty Fathoms dive watch had beaten the Rolex Submariner to the market by about a year, used them on several models, along with other pioneers of purpose-built timepieces for diving, including Omega, Aquastar, Zodiac, and Rolex's sister brand, Tudor. 

Rubber Meets Luxury

While the rubber Tropic strap gained a foothold among a specific cadre of enthusiasts, it would still be years before any version of a rubber strap would find its way to a watch that met the traditional definition of “luxury” - i.e., one with a case in precious metal. As coveted as the Rolex Submariner is today, it was still mostly marketed as a tool watch, albeit a very high-end one, in the first few decades after its debut. It was a much younger watch brand, Hublot, founded in 1980 in the Geneva suburb of Nyon, that would take the bold step of combining a gold watch case with a strap made of black rubber for its Hublot Classic (above), the precursor of today's Classic Fusion model. This unprecedented combo helped establish the “Art of Fusion” design ethos that has since put Hublot on the map as a luxury-watch manufacturer, and it opened the door, albeit slowly, to more well-established heritage watchmakers taking the plunge into mounting some of their most high-end timepieces on rubber in addition to leather and steel. 

Hublot was indisputably a pioneer in this area, though not yet “mainstream” enough to be widely influential. Perhaps the watershed moment for luxury watches on rubber straps arrived in 1997, when Patek Philippe introduced the first Aquanaut (above). Intended as a more accessible version of Patek’s popular sport-luxury Nautilus model, and aimed at the decade’s young cohort of newly minted dot-com millionaires, the Aquanaut was the first Patek Philippe watch mounted on an integrated rubber strap with an embossed checkerboard pattern that echoed the texture of its dial. The case of that first Aquanaut was steel rather than gold — various precious-metal versions would follow — but the message to Patek Philippe’s contemporaries on the upper echelon of horology was clear: staging your highest-end timepieces on a rubber strap was no longer gauche or taboo. Prestigious watchmaking maisons old and new would follow suit, including Audemars Piguet, Vacheron Constantin, Omega, Richard Mille, Chopard, Parmigiani Fleurier, and — eventually, and inevitably — Rolex.  

The First Oysterflex: Yacht-Master Everose Gold

Rolex, of course, had long been recognized for its distinctive bracelets, from the original, sporty three-link Oyster, to the more elegant Jubilee and President (you can discover all of them here). When Rolex finally decided to introduce rubber into its modern lineup, it did so in a way that was quite different from how other watchmakers approached their rubber straps. The Oysterflex, which the Crown introduced in 2015, was distinguished from all of these competitors in several respects — not least of which was that Rolex refers to it not as a strap, but a bracelet. Still exclusive to Rolex and not as yet emulated by any other brand, the Oysterflex bracelet certainly resembles a fairly standard black rubber watch strap at first glance, A closer examination, however, reveals that it is actually much more complex in construction.

The interior houses a patented “longitudinal cushion” system, composed of titanium and nickel-alloy blades wrapped inside black elastomer, which gives the Oysterflex the rigidity and stability of a metal bracelet while still offering the softness and suppleness of a strap. The raised ridge in the center of the exterior surface adds a stylish layer of depth, while the curved, wing-like cushions on the underside also aid in comfort by raising the rubber just slightly away from the skin for airflow and also help to stabilize the bracelet. Also speaking to its bonafides as a bracelet rather than a strap are its use of an Oysterlock deployant safety clasp with the patented Easylink extension system — both hallmarks of Rolex’s metal bracelets.

The Oysterflex made its debut, appropriately, on a model designed to bridge the stylistic gap between tool watch and dress watch: the Rolex Yacht-Master Ref. 116655 (above), the first in the sailing-inspired series with a case made from Everose gold, Rolex’s proprietary rose-gold alloy  and the first to contain a movement meeting Rolex’s “Superlative Chronometer” standard that was rolled out the same year. Its bezel was executed in black Cerachrom (Rolex’s proprietary ceramic), with a relief-style 60-minute scale derived from the bezel of the Submariner, the watch for which the original Yacht-Master was designed to serve as a more upscale alternative. At first, the Oysterflex bracelet was available only on these Yacht-Master models, which had sleek black dials and were offered in cases sized at either 40mm or 37mm. 

OysterFlex Expands: Daytona and Sky-Dweller

Rolex extended the Oysterflex bracelet to its megapopular, motorsport-inspired luxury chronograph, the Daytona, in 2017, releasing three gold-cased versions — white, yellow (above), and Everose — each with a black Cerachrom bezel (here hosting the model’s emblematic tachymeter scale rather than a dive scale) and a high-contrast “panda” dial with black subdials on the gold-toned dials that carry forth the matte black of the Oysterflex bracelet. (if we’re pretending that most owners of the Daytona as well as the Yacht-Master are actually wearing these watches for their originally intended sporting activity, a well-vented rubber strap actually would be more comfortable for most racing drivers in a sweaty cockpit than a bracelet.) 

In 2021, another Daytona (above), this one in a white-gold case with a visually stunning meteorite dial with polished black subdials, debuted on an Oysterflex bracelet, opening the door to even more decorative stone and precious-stone dial treatments on the classic racing chronograph, like 2024’s version with a white mother-of-pearl dial and a bezel of precious-cut diamonds, whose white-gold case was mounted on an Oysterflex. The most recent addition to the Daytona’s Oysterflex options (below) came in 2025, sporting an 18k yellow gold case, a black Cerachrom tachymeter bezel, and a riveting turquoise lacquer dial with gilt-detailed black counters. 

The Oysterflex remained the purview of the Yacht-Master and the Daytona until 2020, when the innovative rubber wristlet made its way for the first time to Rolex’s Sky-Dweller model. Introduced to great fanfare in 2012 and expanding rather quietly as a product family since, the Sky-Dweller is Rolex’s annual calendar watch, whose cleverly designed in-house movement, Caliber 9001, employs an off-center, rotating 24-hour disk to indicate a second time zone. The local time, indicated by the central hands, can be adjusted quickly when you change time zones by setting the hour hand forward or backward in one-hour increments without affecting the other indicators. Like other annual calendars (Rolex calls its version a Saros calendar), it’s designed to require adjustment only once per year, at the end of February. The first two models on Oysterflex bracelets were in 18k yellow gold and Everose gold; a third version, in 18k white gold (below) with a black dial, followed in 2023, bringing with it an updated movement, Caliber 9002, which adds Rolex’s patented Chronergy escapement to the complex calendar functions. 

For those keeping track, that’s now three Rolex Oyster Professional watches now available on the flexible, sturdy Oysterflex bracelet: Yacht-Master, Daytona, and Sky-Dweller. Conspicuously missing from the list are the Submariner, the first Rolex sport-luxury watch to embrace rubber as part of its undersea-ready ensemble, and the GMT-Master, the other legendary timepiece in the Crown’s lineup . Will the Oysterflex find its way to these or other other popular Rolex models? Only time (and eventually, Rolex itself) will tell. You can learn more over at rolex.com