Building Tessé: How Thomas Brissiaud Designed a Watch Brand with Intention

What happens when a deep love for vintage horology intersects with a powerful family legacy?

Today, WatchDNA host Thomas experiences a "double Thomas" moment as he sits down in Vancouver with Thomas, the founder of the newly launched microbrand Tessé Watches. Fresh off their official launch just days prior, the duo discusses the overwhelming community feedback on Tessé's debut model and the deeply personal story that brought the brand to life.

Named after a quiet, rural village in Charente, France, where his grandparents lived, Tessé Watches was born out of a moment of loss and remembrance. After his grandfather, Michel—a dedicated, modest Renault car factory worker—passed away, Thomas inherited his prized 1970s Lip mechanical watch. It was a watch Michel wore with absolute pride, always hanging it safely on a single nail in the house before heading out to tend his garden. Finding that watch still hanging on the exact same nail years later sparked the "crazy" idea to start a watch company.

Thomas pulls back the curtain on how the brand's debut model modernizes that classic 1970s French Lip DNA blending a striking vintage cushion/tonneau case shape with heavily textured dials and beautifully decorated, high-grade Swiss automatic movements.

In this video:

The Story of Tessé: Moving from watch collecting to founding a brand rooted in the Charente region of France.

A Shared Heritage: Host Thomas shares a crazy coincidence about finding his own father’s long-lost vintage Lip watch from 1973.

Design Language: How Tessé translates '70s retro aesthetics (cushion cases, distinct hour markers, and unique hands) into modern luxury craftsmanship.  

Swiss Heart, French Soul: A look through the sapphire exhibition caseback at the beautifully finished and decorated Swiss movement.

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Timestamps:
0:00 - The "Double Thomas" Interview in Vancouver
0:17 - Early Feedback: Launching a Brand-New Watch Brand
0:39 - The Origin Story: Why "Tessé" is Rooted in a French Village
1:00 - Inheriting a Legend: The 1970s Mechanical Lip Watch
1:12 - A Crazy Coincidence: Host Thomas Finds His Dad's 1973 Lip
1:40 - The Story of Michel: Garden Nails and French Factory Pride
2:17 - Translating '70s Retro Style: The Modern Cushion Case & Indices
2:43 - Movement & Finish: Elevating Vintage Design with Swiss Craftsmanship
3:05 - Where is Tessé, France? A Hidden Gem Near Bordeaux
3:18 - Outro & Exploring the WatchDNA Brand Directory

#TesseWatches #Microbrands #VintageLipWatch #RetroWatches #70sStyle #SwissMovement #WatchDNA #FrenchHeritage #CushionCase #WatchCollecting #Horology #NewWatchRelease #WatchFair

Transcript

0:00

Hey everyone, I am with Thomas. You get the double Thomas. Lucky you with Tesse Watches. Welcome to Vancouver. Thank you. The show is Thursday now. How's the show for you? Pretty good. Being an um a brand new brand, new model we just launched a few days ago. So it was good for us to have people see the watch, feel the watch, give us some feedback. The feedback has been amazing. Amazing. It's pretty good. Cool. Really happy. Can you give us obviously an introduction about the brand? But what I also love to know is one day you decide one day to wake up, be like, hey, I should create my own watch. Craziness. Tesse is the name of a village in France where my grandparents uh lived. That's kind of the history behind the brand as well. So I've always loved watches. I've been collecting, accumulating watches. And when my grandfather uh Michel passed away, I inherited his watch. Um, very typical watch of the 70s on the lip French brand. No way, I just got one from my dad, a lib. When he got tour one day, sorry, I'm jumping out of here, but I went I went back home in November, and then my dad keep my parents keep moving, and then I go to his office and I see a box, and I open as a kid, you know, I opened the box and I'm like, oh, there's a safe and it's open. I opened and there's a watch, a lip. And I'm like, oh damn, look at lip. He's like, whoa, I didn't find I it's been like 10 years I couldn't find it. And because moving around, he's like, oh here, can you fix it for me? Because obviously it was like he got it when he was uh when he turned 18 and now he's 73, you know, so yeah, lip. That's cool. Yeah, it's like even for my grandfather. My grandfather was very modest, so he worked in um in a car factory for uh Renault his entire life. Okay, started working, he was 16, retired at uh 65 from the same company. Yeah, and I remember him wearing this watch all the time. He was very proud of it. Yeah, it was made in France, mechanical, yeah, automatic. Yeah, he was he would show it to me wearing it all the time. And he loved gardening, and I remember as a kid, he would remove it every time. He would go gardening just not to damage it, yeah, and hang it on a nail somewhere in his house. Yeah. And after he passed away, I went and visited my grandmother, and the watch was hanging on that nail. Oh. It was like, oh, I want that watch. That's what triggers that, really. And uh the watch itself takes some uh design elements of that. So we have some of the the initial tunnel shape that I modernized a bit with uh a bit of a cushion applied on it. You have the hour markers and uh and the hands that are very typical from the 70s as well. Yeah, he was very proud of it being like made in France. He was very a big supporter of like you know craftsmanship and everything. Yeah, I just went to Switzerland. I love it. We have a nice Swiss movement, nicely decorated, beautiful finish. Really wanted something with uh a lot of details, okay, uh nice finishes. Where's the village? Which area in France? Um it's in uh Charente, so about two hours from Bordeaux. Okay, uh very rural, very quiet. For sure. Yeah, okay, beautiful. Listen, Thomas, it was a pleasure. Good luck for the likes there, enchanté, yeah, but thank you again. And you guys make sure you go on watchdnna.com slash tace because we have listed 262 brands as of now. All the brands of the show are there, and you can go get information, and there's a direct link to their website. So if you're interested to learn more, contact Thomas or whatever it is, just reach out to them. So watchdnna.com slash tace.