Introducing
Kristine Lam
Our paths into horology are often straightforward but sometimes shaped like a windy and foggy mountain road—we don’t really know where it started, where it will end, and when we will join it. While the typical parcours of a watch enthusiast begins with a parent, uncle, aunt, sibling or best friend who introduces him/her to the formidable and addictive world of watchmaking, for others, it occurs through happenstance: a particularly difficult personal experience, an (hopefully) one-in-a-lifetime global pandemic, or a life partner’s latest business endeavour. In any of these cases, the newly formed member of the watch community didn’t intend on being here or come to it fueled by a particular interest for horology, but instead stumbled inside by way of necessity. This is what happened to Kristine Lam, today’s protagonist in our latest installment of Women in Horology, founder of strap brand HasNoBounds and wife to Leonardo Tsai, founder of Selten Watches.
Speaking with Kristine about her professional background, her joining of our global horological society, of Hasnobounds and Selten, as well as of her personal journey into watch collecting and what these incredibly complex and somewhat antiquated machines mean to her, we are invited to discover an unusual experience of, and hear about a singular vision for watches and of the people who make up the industry, whether they make or collect or talk about timekeeping devices. We often hear our colleagues say that it is the people who make our hobby interesting but not necessarily (or only) the watches, and although I do generally agree with that statement, I didn’t understand to which extend this was true until interviewing Kristine and having the rare pleasure of witnessing her interact with watch folks at fairs, to not only speak about HasNoBounds and Selten, but also to exchange about that obsession that is ours and that connects us together.
So I want to thank Kristine for taking the time to speak with me to make this article possible.
Kristine Lam
One of the Rare Benefits of a Pandemic
Ever since creating the Mainspring Watch Magazine in late 2021, and through numerous interviews of watch brand owners, content creators, and women in our niche industry who occupy many important roles in our indeed small but global community, one thing became instantly clear: a lot of it started because/thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic and the lockdowns. During the latter, the whole world found itself with tremendous amounts of free time and nowhere to go, and so many new businesses, passions and hobbies, and careers started and blossomed during these tumultuous and uncertain times. For the watch industry the impact of COVID-19 came in the form of the creation of many watch brands which are now extremely popular, of new watch enthusiasts, and of new opportunities to connect with a new group of human beings outside of our regular physical circles. Many created Instagram accounts to share photos of their favorite watches and to discover new ones, and meet many incredible folks.
Kristine wasn’t one of us before COVID as she rarely wore watches and, as she frankly put it, had no real interest in them save for the few occasional fashion watches, but really nothing major. Neither did her professional background should have logically led her to become an horological entrepreneur, at least that wasn’t her intention when she studied English at university in Hong Kong and went on to spend a decade working for a furniture company’s R&D department specializing in leather upholstery. There she started as an assistant in the design department, gathering clients’ feedback on products and passing it along to her colleagues, becoming involved with the product development process, and eventually with design itself. The connection between her career and horology wasn’t an evident one of course, and it came in the form of being immensely bored during the lockdowns and living with someone (Leo) who was getting started on his first watch collection.
Specifically, Leo created Selten in 2017 but spent four years designing and fine-tuning his first collection which he launched by way of a Kickstarter campaign in 2021. So, Kristine and Leo were stuck at home, the latter struggling to find quality leather straps which didn’t cost an arm and a leg, and the former being an authority in leather and product development, so an actual in-house expert. Naturally, Kristine thought she could help and design and get leather straps manufactured for Selten’s first collection, which she successfully did, and which started HasNoBounds. Though her brand didn’t become a wholesome endeavour just at first, as she first invested her time and efforts developing straps which she shipped around the world to influencers she had met through Instagram for them to test-drive her first creations. Initial feedback was encouraging, more than that actually, and that prompted Kristine to lay the foundations to make HasNoBounds and to develop coherent, unique, and quality strap collections.
HasNoBounds: Philosophy, Materials, Community
Given her pre-HasNoBounds professional background, and her specialization in leather upholstery, it won’t come as a shock that all the strap collections Kristine has developed first focus on sourcing the right materials, specifically, fine and rare materials. She opts for vegetable-died leathers and mostly works with Italian tanneries she connected with through her first career—a career, actually, which occupied most of her time until just recently—and which offer substantial stocks of leathers she can work with. Her first collection used something called “Museum Calf” (it is the actual name) which is fine full grain leather, mostly known in high-end footwear collections, which comes with a distinct marble-like hand-dye which gives it depth and character. Kristine always opts out of side stitching which would give her straps too much of a pedestrian look, and focuses on 20 x 16mm straps with 4mm tapers which, originally, better fit smaller wrists—Asian wrists and male and female wrists as she said.
Throughout the development of her collections, and from the very beginning, Kristine has always put a great emphasis on customer feedback in order to improve her designs, something which makes sense given her previous experience in the domain. Getting customer feedback means heavily engaging with the online watch community which supported Kristine’s new business venture from the get-go, which led to her making straps in different lengths in order to fit the needs of her customers and to widen the reach of her collections. What Kristine is very good at, and which sets her apart from other strap brands, is her natural ability to listen and custom-make straps, often receiving wristshots of customers showcasing their newest acquisitions and asking her what strap would best fit their watch. This unique approach has led Kristine to be constantly researching new types of leathers she could work with, different styles, and to then make straps for modern and vintage watches, classic and sporty timepieces.
Although her personal collection is relatively modest in size (we will talk about it later,) she brainstorms new designs for her watches by wearing different types of timekeeping devices, swinging between her ultra classic rectangular Jaeger LeCoultre Reverso and a Tudor Black Bay, test-driving how one strap works better with a shaped case and another with a circular one, how divers can actually look snazzy with a leather strap and Japanese festive horological creations with a rustic one, and how a thinner leather strap works better on a Cartier Tank but a thicker one on an Omega Speedmaster Moonwatch Professional. So she tests her ideas and designs onto her own watches, and as we mentioned earlier, through the online community of Instagram influencers she has connected with when she first got into horology during the lockdowns. Kristine’s approach is therefore very hands-on, pragmatic, and it reflects in the wide selection of straps she offers and their relative attainability.
The Meaning of Watches & Collecting Habits
Even though Kristine wasn’t a watch person before creating HasNoBounds, a period in someone’s life full of darkness and endless intellectual meanderings—who are we kidding? It’s fine folks—she has eventually become a full member of the international watch community and a decent watch nerd herself. And to understand how she collects watches and what they mean to her, we must first look at the meaning behind the name HasNoBounds. When she started designing straps, she first wanted to focus on using calfskin leather for it is soft and comes with fine grain (perfect for making elegant straps) but she also didn’t want to limit herself by using only one particular material. She knew she would want to experiment with different types of leathers each offering unique technical and visual properties, so she didn’t want to be bound to any one thing in particular hence the brand’s name. But what makes Kristine and HasNoBounds unique is the overarching interest in what is elegant and refined but different and unique.
In other words, she wanted to be free to explore and experience different things, as she wears different types of watches, which she mostly discovers online by studying what others wear and finds inspiration in what they post. As she put it, she only started wearing watches because she saw others wearing watches, not so much within her local group of friends who wear what is trendy and fashionable and not what is authentic and unique, but through Instagram and therefore the online watch community. When she became interested in watches she started to gain interest in vintage, neo-vintage, and dress watches (with a few exceptions) in all sizes, shapes and forms, as she feels equally comfortable wearing a small Tank and a larger Black Bay, as long as she wears what makes her feel herself. Similarly, she doesn’t believe that today we should make a difference between male and female watches as the line separating the two gets blurrier each day and that women can wear big tool watches and men small diamond-set ones.
So in her collection, which she shares with Leo, one will find an Omega Speedmaster and Railmaster, a Junghans Max Bill, a couple of Tudor Black Bays’, a few Seiko and Grand Seiko’s as well as a Nomos she treated herself for after borrowing a friend’s Tangente for an extended period of time. Kristine has also developed an interest in micro and independent brands, as she has her eyes set on an Anoma (she met the brand owner in Hong Kong earlier this year) and has collaborated with Swedish brand Tusenö on sourcing straps for its Shellaback and Windseeker collections. But the most important watch she has in her collection is her JLC Reverso which she wears as you could wear a robust diver or utilitarian field watch, meaning all the time to go anywhere to do about anything. The Reverso is the one watch through which Kristine has first experienced what we all have experienced, meaning the feeling of being naked and unprepared for the day without our favorite timepiece strapped to our wrist.
Conclusion: The Community First
Speaking with Kristine was refreshing as she never actually made it about herself but instead steered the conversation towards what we all watch enthusiasts strive for: to be our authentic selves in the hobby. Whether we talked about her job in R&D for the furniture company, helping Leo with Selten, or creating and running HasNoBounds, Kristine always focused, perhaps unbeknownst to her, on the human aspect of whatever she did. Gathering customers’ feedback to help her team create better products, figure out how to equip Selten’s collections with fine but fairly-priced leather straps, and attentively listening to her first supporters’ feedback to improve her straps, Kristine works, thinks, and creates for herself of course but mostly for others, as she’s truly motivated by the people who make up our community and how she can contribute to making it a little better. So to understand HasNoBounds we must understand Kristine, and to understand Kristine we must understand what makes us human and compassionate.
Moreover, by navigating Hasnbounds’ website we can see that it is all about the straps, perhaps to a certain fault never about herself, classic and elegant leather creations finely curated in cohesive and coherent ways, showing off enough personality to make us want to fasten one to our favorite watches, but with enough understated character that it would be impossible for any of us to flex, anywhere and in any situation, by wearing one of her straps. I have the feeling that Kristine would never surround herself with, or become the type of person who privileges glamour over authenticity, quantity over quality, and get-rich-themes over consistency, Which proves, at least to me, that Kristine works first for the community which has inspired her to join the hobby, in order to contribute her unique professional experience and expertise in leatherworks to add life and beauty to these analogue objects we are so obsessed with.
Thanks for reading.