Time shift

A serendipitous collaboration between innovative watch brand Ressence and Marc Newson dials up on the industrial designer's earlier cult offerings

- HANNAH SILVER

Marc Newson had been aware of Ressence, the Belgian watch brand founded in 2010 by industrial designer Benoît Mintiens, since its early days. 'It's not easy in the watch world to create something truly new and innovative - but Benoît did,' says Newson. 'For me, his very first watch was reminiscent of some of the work that I'd been doing at Ikepod [the watch brand Newson co-founded in 1994], and it was very welcome. I was really happy to see what he'd done - it felt like a lovely evolution.'

Since its inception, Mintiens has established a distinctive aesthetic for his brand, focusing on a pure design that eschews the superfluous and rethinks the essentials, including the way we tell the time. 'As an industrial designer, it's your job to reconsider and challenge situations that have always been there,' says Mintiens. 'What is special about what we do is that we put functionality back on the agenda.'