An Interview with Thomas Fleming on His New Brand, Fleming
Thomas Fleming recently launched his new brand, on which my esteemed collegue Bilal Khan wrote an excellent hands-on article, which you can find here. For me, it was also an opportunity to dig deeper in the background story behind these watches, talking with Thomas about what motivated him, and what he would like to achieve in the world of watches. The interview has been edited for clarity.
Photo by Kyna Uwaeme
Martin Green: Where does your passion for fine watchmaking come from"
Thomas Fleming: I never thought anything of watches until a longtime friend turned 18, got a Tag Heuer Aquaracer as a gift from his parents, and shared the concept of a mechanical watch with me for the first time. I?ve always been a bit of a geek for mechanical things, and when he explained how the watch had no battery and instead just needed to be wound every so often, that his dad got one when he was 18 that he still wore daily thirty plus years later, and that it could endure diving hundreds of feet below the surface? I started down a rabbit hole from which it appears I?ll never emerge!
I initially was most interested in purpose-built tool watches; I thought (and still do) that the stories that went into creating them, as well as those their creation enabled, were incredibly intriguing. Over time, though, I became increasingly obsessed with fine watchmaking; the fact that it continues to endure and advance despite there being no practical reason for it to is really amazing to m...
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