A PATRON OF SPORTS
Elegance and sportiness come to life in Richard Mille’s latest lifestyle timepieces
THERE IS SOMETHING quite mesmerising about Richard Mille watches. Quite a few qualities that have long endeared the brand to watch connoisseurs and collectors - from its powerful visual identity and reputation for technological innovation to its strong ties to the worlds of sport, racing and beyond. It certainly helps that Richard Mille’s timepieces are versatile, offering a mix of elegance and sportiness for everyday wear as well as hardiness for the roughest sports field.
The following contemporary watches embody three distinct qualities of Richard Mille: the brand’s contemporary approach of merging lifestyle and sporty elements, the way it continues to achieve new technological milestones, and, finally, its prominence as a patron of sports.
Every day, any day
The RM 33-02 – a reinterpretation of the RM 033 introduced back in 2011 now launched as a limited-edition of 140 pieces – combines the performance of a sports watch with the classical elegance of a round case.
“We believe it is both essential and logical to pay the same care and attention to evolving our collections as to the original creation of our models,” Julien Boillat, Richard Mille’s Technical Director, explains. “Embodying the brand’s intended vision of extreme versatility, the RM 033 is a watch for every day, and any day. We have reinterpreted its aesthetics, without disservice to the original version, by accentuating its lines. Meanwhile, the exterior decoration, case and dial have been reworked to project a sportier vibe. The RM 33-02 thus achieves a delicate synthesis of
so-called ‘lifestyle’ style and sporty style’.”
This is also the first round - although sharpeyed watch afficionados might notice the curves of Richard Mille’s signature tonneau shape automatic watch crafted in Carbon TPT, with the bezel and caseback also in Carbon TPT. The caseband, on the other hand, comes in satinfinished red gold, which contrasts nicely against the sporty and high-performance vibe of the Carbon TPT elements.
Driving the RM 33-02 is the skeletonised RMXP1 calibre in grade-5 titanium. Besides being technically impressive, the finishes on the movement together with the watch’s exterior elements and hour markers work together to create a complex sense of depth and power.
Thin, thinner, extra thin
Creating a thin mechanical watch presents a unique set of challenges for a watchmaker, and creating a thin automatic watch can be considered an incredible feat of design and manufacturing.
The RM 67-01 Automatic Flat is the brand’s iconic lifestyle model which ups the ante by creating a sense of visual depth on a super sleek timepiece.
The first key element of the RM 67-01 is the automatic movement powering it: the in-house designed CRMA6 with a thickness of only 3.6mm. Extensive skeletonisation throughout the movement’s architecture gives the watch its visual depth, always central to Richard Mille’s approach.
No less impressive is the RM 67-01’s case, which marks the first time that the tonneau shape has been crafted in an extra flat form. Each case represents more than 215 separate machining operations and hundreds of hours of machining, stamping, tooling, brushing, polishing and so on. It is, in fact, the sleekest model of the tonneau shaped Richard Mille timepieces, which carries one of the most time consuming and complex cases created in Switzerland today.