Sean Connery wears a Rolex Submariner

The NATO strap started here. Connery wears the same Rolex Submariner ref. 6538 from Dr. No and From Russia with Love, but in Goldfinger the leather strap is gone, replaced by a striped regimental-pattern fabric strap that would later become known worldwide as the "Bond NATO." The term is slightly anachronistic (the actual NATO-specification watch strap wasn't standardized until the late 1970s), but the look originated in this film, and it permanently changed how people wear dive watches.

Guy Hamilton directed Goldfinger, and the Submariner appears in one of the most reproduced shots in Bond history: Connery behind the wheel of the Aston Martin DB5. The 6538's 38mm case and gloss black dial are visible in a fleeting wrist shot that has been analyzed frame-by-frame by collectors for decades. At the time, nobody involved in the production thought they were creating a cultural artifact. The watch was still Cubby Broccoli's personal property, loaned to the set for the third consecutive film.

This is the third of four 6538 appearances across Connery's Bond films, and the striped strap is the detail that separates Goldfinger from its predecessors. The leather strap in Dr. No and From Russia with Love made the Submariner look like any other watch. The fabric strap made it look like Bond's watch: casual, military-adjacent, and slightly against the rules. Rolex has never officially offered a NATO strap on any of their models, but they don't need to. Connery did the marketing for free in 1964, and sixty years later, aftermarket NATO straps outsell leather for Submariners by a wide margin.