Mr Sid Mashburn vaguely remembers his first watch purchase: a well-built, seemingly indestructible Timex.

“I was about 10 years old when I got one,” the menswear designer says. “They had an incredible slogan – ‘It takes a licking and keeps on ticking’ – what a tagline! And their TV commercials were even more incredible. They would do these ‘torture tests’, where guys from really hard-core professions would put the watch through the gauntlet to see if it held up. It made quite an impression on me, and I still love how, even today, Timex represents this simple, spartan machine, with just the right amount of stylish interest. It’s the first watch I remember being excited to get, and the only watch we’ve carried in our shop since the day we opened.”

His affinity for watches dates back further, however. Thanks to his father’s fascination with antique clocks and watches generally – he was a “true timepiece enthusiast” – a young Mashburn grew up in a house filled with dozens of antique clocks and timepieces from all different eras.

“My dad was a member and a fellow of the National Association of Watch & Clock Collectors (NAWCC),” he says. “He loved them. He wound up with a lot of watches, but really he collected antique clocks. He loved American clocks from the early part of the 19th century, and there were lots of Seth Thomas and some E Howards. He had a little workshop in our garage where he worked on them, and if a clock was in working condition, it was in the house – and ticking. And if it wasn’t working, it was in the workshop until it was. He even helped fix clocks of neighbours and friends. So, I’d say my earliest memory of watches would be around my dad and his workshop.”

Mashburn has moved around a lot through the years. Originally born in Mississippi, he found his way to the bright lights of New York City to start a career in fashion where, as fate would have it, he met his future wife and business partner, Ann.

“I met my wife Ann in New York City. She was the assistant to Polly Mellen at Vogue, and at the time I was working for British Khaki. We were at a party and she pulled me aside and asked if I was interested in coming to interview for a new start-up catalogue company out of New Jersey. This was 1986 and that company was J.Crew, and they hired me as the first menswear designer. That was, for me, where it all began. And following that, I worked for Ralph Lauren, Tommy Hilfiger and Lands’ End before we opened our shop [Sid Mashburn] in 2007.”

Now based in Atlanta, Georgia, Mashburn has garnered a reputation for crafting impeccable suiting and easy-wearing tailored staples for men. With five physical locations in five cities across the US – and a sixth in NYC to open in the fall – an e-commerce site, a travelling team, and wholesale partnerships with a few select partners, including MR PORTER, Mashburn is a man about town.

But being a watch column, it would be remiss of us not to mention Mashburn’s current collection, which highlights his penchant for all things vintage.

“It’s probably no surprise that I love clothes and style and think about it every day,” he says. “It comes with the territory of being a designer. A watch is part of that. So while I have a few different watches – a Tudor Prince from the 1960s and an early 1970s gold Zenith, a couple of Heuer chronos – the watch I have worn almost daily for two decades is a Rolex Explorer 1016. It’s timeless, it goes with literally everything and looks just as great at the beach as it does with black tie – it’s almost a working man’s Rolex, if there is such a thing.”