- The Ressence Type 1ZZ is a new limited series watch this year that you’ve probably never heard of
- The piece was born out of a collaboration between the Belgium watch brand ‘Ressence’ and the owner of ‘Chronopassion’, one of the coolest watch shops in the world
- Unlike conventional watches, this piece operates by a series of rotating disks on the dial and the case itself to show the progression of time
Ressence might be a watch brand you’ve never ever heard of. It’s a small independent watch maker from Belgium that does crazy things like make watches that tell the time using rotating discs rather than hands and make watches full of oil. You’ll be glad we told you then, because the new Ressence Type 1ZZ is one of the brand’s coolest creations yet.
The Type 1ZZ is a watch that is only available at one place, a place dubbed ‘the craziest watch retailer in the world’. Choronpassion in Paris is an independent retailer that strives to collect the most esoteric watches in the world. The retailer has brands such as HYT, MB&F and Arnold & Son, which all make some of the most interesting watches in the game.
If you aren’t that familiar with the brands mentioned above, here’s a watch from each brand to show you what it has going on.
MB&F’s ‘LM1 Silberstein’
Arnold & Son’s ‘DBG Skeleton’
HYT’ ‘Skull Maori’
Back to the Ressence though, it is a watch that was made in collaboration with Laurent Picciotto, the owner of Chronopassion. The piece is a 20-piece limited edition of Ressence’s earlier Type 1 Slim watch. This special edition has an all matte black/grey colour scheme and we all know matte black basically makes anything look 100x cooler.
Eagle-eyed readers may clock how the watch itself has no crown, the crown being what you use to change the time on a watch. This watch instead has the case back itself acting as the crown, a patented method from the brand.
The Type 1ZZ shows the hours, minutes, seconds and date using a series of rotating discs. Different discs are put on top of a fixed dial, these discs then move around that fixed dial to show the change in time.
The movement itself is called the ‘ROCS1’ system, along with an ETA movement. The ‘ROCS’ movements from Ressence are of course patented, meaning no other watches around use this same method to tell the time. The sub-dials on the watch spin around the fixed disc to make a seriously cool looking watch.
Each Type 1ZZ is engraved with ‘1 of 20’ on the back and you can pick one up at Chronopassion for around €18,500 or around AED 75,700.
