MASTERS OF TIME
Richard Mille
WHO WOULD BE so bold as to create a wristwatch with a selling price that’s akin to the value of a Hollywood home? The answer is the visionary CEO and President of his namesake brand, Richard Mille. At this year’s Watches & Wonders convention in Hong Kong, this genius of haute horlogerie wowed the press and public alike with the unveiling of his latest model: the RM 56-02 Sapphire Tourbillon, which carries a whopping US$2.2 million price tag.
But this isn’t the first time Mille has made headlines. Since being introduced to the world of watchmaking in 2001, the brand has created quite a buzz with its niche timepieces. Although the steep price tag of each model – no less than six digits in dollars – is initially shocking, the high value is justified when considering the highly technical and sophisticated design and production processes each watch requires. And judging by Richard Mille’s sales, watch collectors would agree. All 10 pieces of the limited run of the RM 56-02 model available in Hong Kong had been snatched up before they could even hit the sales floor.
Mille got his start in watchmaking in 1972, when he was hired as export department manager for a French watch company, Finhor. In the 1990s, Mille joined Mauboussin, the French jewellery firm, at Place Vendome in Paris, where he eventually served as President of the watchmaking division and CEO of the jewellery division. Although these positions brought him into contact with a network of top Swiss movement crafters such as Renaud & Papi of Audemars Piguet, Mille’s creativity was limited by corporate constraints like production costs and brand strategies.
“There were many ideas brewing in my head, and I was really bored with the kinds of watches being presented in the market,” Mille recalls. “After spending many years working for other watch and jewellery companies, the time had come for me to go out on my own. So, I essentially went off to make the kind of watch that I wanted to buy for myself, but never could.”
What he had in mind was a composite of the technical knowledge he had accumulated over the years. Ever since he was a child, Mille showed a strong inclination towards all things technical. “I was about nine years old when I dismantled my first watch,” Mille recalls. “Those amazing ‘blowup’ technical drawings of cars I saw as a child were inspirational. You know, those exploded views that used to be the rage for car catalogues and which are still used for instruction and repair manuals for cars, airplanes, engines and all kinds of machines. For me, they are like works of art in themselves and fascinating to see. I wanted my watches to be physically just as interesting and beautiful as those technical and artistic drawings were.”
It was a risky bet, though. To build the highly technical watch of his dreams, Mille was forced to operate with little regard for production costs, which were excessive. With the confidence that his timepieces could fill a void in the existing market, Mille went on to release his first watch to the public, the RM 001, in 2001. Despite the 200,000-euro price tag, his first model met with immediate success. Several hundred orders came in for the very sparingly manufactured model.
“If I had thought there would be no market for our watches, I would have never have started, of course,” Mille says. “But belief and reality are two different things. So I believed beforehand that I would succeed, yet I was still amazed when everything began moving so quickly. Of course, it feels marvellous and I enjoy every minute on the job - every day of the week.”
Since that day, Mille has set out to push watchmaking beyond its conventional way of operating. His 21st-century approach to horology focuses first and foremost on technical innovation, an approach that has made the brand synonymous with words like “futuristic” and “high-tech”. Inspired by his passion for technique and research and development, Mille sought to apply the techniques and materials found in the most innovative domains of F1 racing car development and the aerospace industry to watchmaking. “It is an expression of
my love for all things technical, and for automobiles and aeronautics in particular,” Mille says of his brand. “My watches are efficient and uncompromising, with no use of gimmicks.”
Indeed, Richard Mille watches, which amount to over 60 different models to date, are both interesting and highly technical. Just as one would find in the high-speed racing cars of today - an inspiration the brand has built its foundations on - function dictates form. Mille has no use or room for anything that is driven solely by aesthetics. Every screw, pinion, lever and spring must fulfill its mission, meeting the highest standards of security and precision, exactly like a racing car. For example, each spline screw used throughout the watch’s movement and watchcase exterior is the result of months of development and investment, requiring more than 20 operations during its manufacturing process.
The materials that make up each watch do not fall short on quality either. Grade 5 titanium and ARCAP, carbon nanofibre, LITAL and ceramics are just a few of the technological, difficultto-work materials Mille uses. Through experimental research, using innovative and sometimes revolutionary new materials, Richard Mille has created some record-breaking watches. The RM
“I was about nine years old when I dismantled my first watch”
27-01 Rafael Nadal Tourbillon, for instance, whose case is made of carbon nanotubes, is the world’s lightest tourbillon wristwatch, weighing in at just 18 grams – the weight of a couple of No. 2 pencils.
“I do not know whether my fascination for watches came first or whether it was my love of technique, research and development,” Mille has told timezone.com, an online watch information resource. “I remember the many times I worked on spare parts that I later used on my model cars that I had built from scratch and that I still have today. Since then, I have spent my time reading technical books relating to watches, cars and aircraft, and this naturally led me to visualise a strong conceptual watch that was highly technical but without gimmicks. This concept was, however, so technically complex that it led to the very highend positioning where it stands now. This is how my passion was transformed into reality, and the tremendous success of this brand is certainly due to the fact that the inspiration was purely technical and not at any time commercial. This is still true today.”
Instead of treading the normal route of commercial endorsements by celebrities, Mille has opted to partner with athletes like the Spanish professional tennis player Rafael Nadal, the Jamaican Olympic athlete Yohan Blake and the American professional golfer Bubba Watson. Just like his approach to watchmaking, Mille’s choice of partnerships with athletes is all about function. His partnership with Nadal, for instance, proved
that Richard Mille’s mechanically delicate watches can survive the shock of racket-to-ball contact.
“It’s simple really,” says Mille. “I want to work with people I like, and they must be really involved in the process when I am making a watch with them. Their feedback in designing and testing is truly essential for me. I want them to wear my watches, not just for the single photo shoot opportunity, but also in their free and private moments.”
The RM 56-02 Sapphire Tourbillon takes its cues from the mechanical architecture of the RM 27-01 Rafael Nadal and its cable-suspended movement. The transparent, virtually scratchresistant sapphire used for the watch’s case, winding barrel bridge, tourbillon and centre bridges creates a whole new expression of weightlessness.
“I wanted this watch to allow anyone looking at it to experience the beauty of those technical, artistic drawings I used to admire as a child,” Mille says of the RM 56-02. “The monumental price is actually very realistic when you understand how difficult it is to work in solid sapphire like this. The material is so hard that even though the machines are working 24/7 all year long, only five watch cases can be produced per year, and that is just the exterior. The movement in this model also has several sapphire parts, and a special structural requirement compared to my other watches.”
Always one to push the boundaries, Mille has never allowed himself to become complacent, despite having overcome such tremendous challenges in horology. When asked what his wildest fantasy is about the possibilities that watchmaking could achieve, Mille concludes: “I really like the idea of a fully mechanical watch, an haute horlogerie piece that has real added value from electronics. Imagine a tourbillon sports watch, for instance, with a normal sapphire glass front. But when you touch the glass, it becomes a screen with barometric and weather data, altitude or other similar information. In practice, it is quite difficult to accomplish, since you would have to create a whole new company with the specialist know-how that such a project would require. If you can keep the mechanical side pure and beautiful though, then such ‘mixes’ should be possible to achieve.”
And, with that, Richard Mille leaves horology enthusiasts dreaming of the future of the craft.