Inside Ressence with Founder Benoît Mintiens

Ressence was founded in Antwerp in 2010 by Benoît Mintiens, a Belgian industrial designer who had previously turned his hand to high-speed trains, aircraft cabins and medical devices – but never a watch. That outsider perspective turned out to be the brand's greatest asset.

Ressence's starting point is the deconstruction of the traditional watch in order to express time in the purest possible way. Rather than beginning with a movement, Mintiens starts with the wearer, asking a simple question: why do you wear a watch? The answer shaped everything, from the patented Ressence Orbital Convex System, which replaces conventional hands with co-planar rotating discs, to oil-filled dials that eliminate distortion and float the display right beneath the crystal.

The brand name itself says it all: a fusion of "renaissance" and "essence", standing for the rebirth of the essential function of a watch, i.e. to give the time. That commitment to legibility and human-centred design has earned Ressence a devoted following among collectors who value genuine innovation over heritage for its own sake.

In this Masters at Work episode, Benoît Mintiens talks about what drew him from industrial design into watchmaking, how thinking like a user rather than a watchmaker changed everything, and where Ressence is headed next.