Bright new Mayfair timepieces for summer from Bamford Watch Department.

Ever since Swatch’s funky fashion watches pioneered precision injection-moulding 36 years ago, polymer timepieces have held a certain charm, even when compared to their more classic steel or gold counterparts.

And, if we’re considering the investment, with a little TLC and the odd battery change, rubber watches could, in fact, outlast the finest Swiss-made watches out there (plus, all those soon-to-be obsolete smartwatches) as well as offering something a little different; an air of fun and irreverence.

Carefree joie de vivre is what Mr George Bamford is going for this summer, with his new and exclusive Mayfair Sport – a rainbow of quartz-driven, rubber-strapped watches priced enticingly at £350, all cased up in vivid shades of high-impact polymer. Just the time – and just in time – to hit the beach.

“We went every which way, trust me,” says Bamford Watch Department’s founder of his material decisions, “titanium, anodised aluminium, you name it. But the only way to get the vibrant colourways we wanted, with that reassuring heft the original steel Mayfair has, was with high-impact polymer.”

When it comes to colour in watchmaking, we’re dealing with one of the industry’s experts. As a third-generation scion of the JCB diggers empire, Mr Bamford eschewed the opportunity to ride the family gravy train (so to speak), having recognised a fertile gap in the watch market: personalisation.

His early black-coloured Rolexes didn’t impress the purists at first, but over time the Bamford Watch Department’s suite of bespoke, mix-and-match options, as well as its own bespoke titanium-coating process became so sophisticated as to attract the attention of LVMH’s legendary watch boss and one of Mr Bamford’s heroes.

“Jean-Claude Biver visited our HQ here in Mayfair,” he recalls fondly of the man partly responsible for reviving traditional Swiss watchmaking during the 1980s, “and simply said, ‘Why are you working on watches by a brand that doesn’t want to work with you? Come and work with me!’”

As a result, you can now spec-up the dials, sub-counters and straps of your factory-endorsed Zenith or TAG Heuer any which way via the Bamford Watch Department website, drawing from a palette of vibrant colours that puts Le Corbusier’s Polychromie Architecturale to shame. It was this success that spurred another customisable product of Bamford’s own – the Mayfair.

Now with a Date version as well as the Sport launching today, Mayfair started out as a loan service for customers who were waiting for their watches to be serviced. It turned into something more permanent when Mr Bamford realised people didn’t want to return them.

“It’s not just about the colours with the new Mayfair Sport, though,” Mr Bamford says. “I wanted it to survive your holidays, in or out of the hotel pool. So, it might just be plastic, but the high-impact polymer we’re using is super tough, it has 100m water-resistance, and the lining of the strap has a tyre tread, to wick sweat away. Plus, I couldn’t see anything else on the market that was about simply having fun.”

Given the watch world’s current obsession with sepia-tinted nostalgia, austere modernism and slim-line classicism, Mr Bamford certainly has a point.

“I’m a child of the 1980s, so I love all those cool, colourful icons of the era: Benetton, the original TAG Heuer Formula 1 watches, the Sony Walkman Sports in canary yellow… Price-wise and desirability-wise, I wanted the Mayfair Sport to be like that G-SHOCK or the Baby G you wanted when you were 16 or 17 years old.”

So, which colour will it be?