Aviator Unveils the Evermade Forged Ares Wallet
The latest Evermade limited edition brings forged carbon with a swirling red and black finish.
Aviator has been quietly building something interesting with its Evermade series. Where the brand's core range is built around function, modularity, and the kind of practical everyday carry that appeals to the minimalist crowd, the Evermade releases operate in a different register entirely. These are limited edition pieces, handcrafted in Aviator's Bavarian workshop, positioned less as wallets you buy to carry and more as objects you buy to own. The latest entry, the Forged Ares, is the most compelling one yet and strikes a fine balance between functional wallet and pure art spectacle.
The Next Wallet in the Evermade Range: The Forged Ares
The Forged Ares is the next variation of Aviator’s familiar slim wallet with the evermade name finished in forged carbon fiber. Forged carbon, unlike standard woven carbon fiber, is produced by compressing chopped carbon strands under heat and pressure, which creates a unique swirling, marbled pattern rather than the uniform weave most people associate with the material. No two pieces come out identical. This follows the Evermade trend with Aviator also having released previous wallets in the range including the Brass Wave, Hive and Forged Nova.
On the Forged Ares, that process has been used to produce a finish that shifts between rich blacks and deep reds depending on how the light catches it. The result is genuinely striking. It has a depth and movement to it that a standard carbon wallet simply does not have, and it wears the Ares name well. This is not a subtle wallet. It is one that will be noticed, and the execution looks close to perfect like i’m staring directly at molten lava.
From a functional standpoint it follows the established Aviator wallet template: a slim, modular card carrier with Aviator’s pull-strap card ejection system, capacity for multiple cards, and the brand’s standard hardware throughout. The focus here, clearly, is the visual rather than the spec sheet.
A High Price for a premium product
The Evermade series has never been aimed at the budget end of the market, and the Forged Ares is no exception. The pricing is steep, and there is no point pretending otherwise coming in at a staggering and eyewatering $1,157.00. As someone who covers wallets at every price point, I will be straightforward: this is not a wallet I would personally buy given what else is available at lower prices that does the same functional job.
But that misses the point of what the Evermade series actually is. These are not competing with Secrid or Ridge on value. They are competing with the kind of premium carry accessories that sit alongside watches, pens, and other objects people buy because they want something exceptional, not merely something functional. Viewed through that lens, the pricing is consistent with the handcrafted, limited edition nature of the piece. Every Evermade wallet is individually made at Aviator’s workshop in Bavaria, and that level of craft has a cost.
What Aviator Is Actually Doing Here
It is worth stepping back and looking at the bigger picture, because the Evermade series says something interesting about where the wallet market is heading.
The way we pay is changing fast. Contactless payments, digital wallets, and phone-based transactions have steadily eroded the functional argument for carrying a physical wallet at all. Many people carry fewer cards than they did five years ago. If the wallet’s job is purely to hold payment cards, that job is becoming smaller with each passing year.
Watch brands faced a version of this same problem during the quartz crisis of the 1970s, when cheap, accurate quartz movements threatened to make the traditional mechanical watch obsolete on purely functional grounds. The industry’s response was to pivot toward luxury, craftsmanship, and heritage as the primary value proposition. The watch as object, not just the watch as timepiece. Rolex and Omega are the most obvious examples of brands that navigated that transition and came out stronger for it.
Aviator’s Evermade series feels like an early and deliberate move in that same direction for the wallet space. Get in early, establish the brand at the premium end, and build a catalogue of collectible pieces while the functional wallet market is still large enough to support it. It is a bold strategy, and the Forged Ares is the clearest articulation of it to date. Getting in early on this could pay off significantly down the road.
Should You Buy the Forged Ares Wallet?
If you are buying a wallet primarily to carry cards and cash, there are better value options at a fraction of the price. But if you have the budget and want something that is genuinely rare, individually crafted, and looks unlike anything else currently in this space, the Forged Ares makes a strong case for itself. The finish is the best Aviator has produced in the Evermade series so far, and if you are going to spend serious money on a wallet, this is one of the more justified reasons to do it.