Stainless steel is more expensive than aluminium and uses a sapphire front.
That's easily within reason to say 200 bucks for a fashion item.
Plus the higher end bands have these precision machined steel bands that are hand polished.
If you look at high end fashion watches, 1k for a high end steel watch is nothing, much less watch bands.
From Breitling:
Example for watches
example for bands.
From TAG Heuer:
Watches.
Everyone wants to scream at Apple for being a fashion brand, but the truth is is that if they were, they'd be Vertu. All gold and sapphire buttons with no real substance running some bland OS with crappy software on top.
Apple's a *fashionable* brand, and the key difference here is that a lot of people want them because they're nice products that are nice to use and look and feel nice. It's approaching consumerism from the other side where you're wanted not because you're exclusive or anything insane or insidious like that, but because you do what you do very well.