REVOLUTIONARY TIME

For Ressence founder and CEO Benoit Mintiens, function always comes before form.

- CHARMIAN LEONG

When Benoit Mintiens presented the Ressence Type 3 at the 2013 Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Geneve (GPHG), it won the “Horological Revelation” prize. And rightly so, seeing as the pebble-shaped watch had no crown, relied on rotating discs to tell the time, and was filled with oil to ensure distortion-free viewing from any angle.

“The idea behind Ressence was based on how we have screens everywhere — screens on your phone, your tablet, your car, and so on. And they’re successful because they’re functional, easy to read, and dynamic,” says Mintiens. “I thought, ‘Well, that’s a good concept. Now let’s make that mechanical.’ So in a Ressence dial, the dynamism doesn’t come from pixels, but from components that rotate around each other. My first watches were flat, but now they look like macarons.”