Apple HQ have announced the launch of an iPad with a pencil, and an iPhone that takes “emergency selfies” [sic] – but let’s cut to the chase, because the new Apple Watch Hermes, which goes on sale 5 October, is clearly the most interesting news from Cupertino. In the story of fashion-tech partnerships, that of Apple with Hermes, home of the Birkin bag, is the most glamorous couple to date.

The original Apple Watch is a good-looking watch, but the Hermes Cape Cod is more elegant, more refined. This watch is Hermes on the outside, Apple on the inside. Look at the slightly deco font of the numerals, the lozenge-shaped face, stirrup-style connection to the leather strap, the second hand in Hermes’ signature orange. The price for the double-strap version (which is The One) is $1,250 (£808), which is considerably less than you’d pay for a non-Apple Watch original Hermes Cape Cod. A bargain? Well, bear in mind that internally this is an Apple product, and unlike luxury watches, Apple products do not last for decades.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Jeff Williams, Apple’s senior vice president of operations, speaks about the Hermes watchband for the Apple Watch. Photograph: BECK DIEFENBACH/REUTERS

So, what’s the Apple strategy here? The huge excitement around the launch of the Apple Watch seems, anecdotally, to have cooled. I think this was because it wasn’t quite Apple enough, while also not being quite fashionable enough. Let me explain. It wasn’t quite Apple enough because it was glitchy, in a first-generation way. I roadtested it, and while I loved how it looked, after a while I found I didn’t use it for much more than a watch, because the maps and the weather took so long to load that I would give up and get my phone out of my bag. Charging things is the most tedious part of modern life – I mean, seriously, I know our ancestors had to collect firewood and draw water from a well but you can’t tell me this isn’t basically as annoying – so it has to be more than a watch, or you can’t be bothered to charge it.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Apple Watch Hermes is unveiled. Photograph: JOSH EDELSON/AFP/Getty Images

The watch also wasn’t quite fashionable enough because the Apple brand isn’t a luxury brand. Apple stands for a purity of design which is democratic in its simplicity, and it does that brilliantly, but it lacks the lush, covetable depth of a luxury brand, the magnetic pull that makes people spend crazy money on, say, a Birkin. It’s too early to say if the glitches are fixed, but the new Hermes aesthetic and association certainly makes the watch more beautiful, and more desirable. Hermes has just announced its own launch of the watch on 4 October, during Paris Fashion Week: we will report back from that.