In 2001, Richard Mille unveiled the RM 001 Tourbillon prototype at Baselworld, raising the bar in the watch industry. The first RM case was tonneau-shaped, in grade 5 titanium, with an open-worked movement visible on both sides, with a tourbillon. Featuring the world’s first torque indicator in a wristwatch, it introduced a shape we today recognise as the brand’s own. In fact, within an industry obsessed with reviving past glories, it has also inspired today’s rise of independent watchmakers eschewing retro for avant-garde, futurist designs.
With Mille, ergonomics and light wearability goes hand in hand with technology, and is always at the forefront of Mille’s output. The architecture of the RM 001 bridges and baseplate appeared to be drawn explicitly from Formula One suspension geometry. Nothing else on any stand that year looked remotely like it, and Mille followed with the 2002 RM 002 Tourbillon, the serial production model of the RM 001 as a 25-piece limited release featuring the world’s first nanofibre baseplate.
The RM 001
Twenty-five years is long enough to establish a brand, and long enough to see whether the founding premise can keep collectors’ attention. For Richard Mille, it did - in the face of changing tastes and tastemakers, Richard Mille seems to inhabit a separate sphere of collectability. With extremely high prices, demand is still outstripping supply. The RM 001 treated the wristwatch as an engineering project first, and with every subsequent reference, Richard Mille’s team has pushed that logic into new territory, with a materials list that reads like an aerospace procurement order: Carbon TPT, Quartz TPT, grade 5 titanium and lithium-aluminium alloy. The brand was also one of the first to endeavour to machine a clear sapphire crystal into a structural watch case.
The brand sensibility is consistent whether the brief originates in a tennis court, a dive bell or a couture atelier, but sport gave the brand its most recognisable chapter, with the RM 006 Tourbillon Felipe Massa opening the doors. This was the first RM model to bear the name of a brand partner, and capable of resisting the G-forces of F1 racetrack conditions. Brand ambassadors, partners in RM speak, is not a new concept, but for Richard Mille the wrists of F1 drivers and top athletes became de facto product test benches. The RM 027, developed for Nadal became a definitive statement of that collaboration: a tourbillon that withstood the centrifugal loading of a world-class serve, with an otherworldy case featuring a Carbon TPT unibody baseplate and watch case. This supported grade 5 titanium bridgework, framed by a bezel and case back machined from organic layers of Quartz TPT® and Carbon TPT®, entirely outside the vocabulary of traditional haute horlogerie. The engineering required to achieve it was akin to motorsport component development, but in miniature.
The RM 025
The RM 025 series was the first big lateral move of the brand, adopting a new, DNA-proofed visual language that offers a more circular take on Mille’s vision. Tough dive watches, still sometimes featuring precious metal, and extending Mille’s design philosophy into a deep blue-green world where pressure and darkness replace the heat and vibration of a tennis rally. We all know that most collectors will not take a supercar-priced wristwatch with them cave diving in Mexico, but with a case built to withstand operational conditions at hundreds of meters below the surface, it might still inspire you.
Richard Mille is to many defined by its connection to sport and motor racing, but the surprising chic of the Bonbon collection was a deliberately bright, unashamedly decorative counterpoint. Appealing to both a female and male audience, it offered something fresh, eschewing the idea that technical seriousness required an industrial, often monochrome vibe. In addition to the Bonbon collection, Richard Mille has a strong history of gem-set complexities like the RM 19-02 Tourbillon Fleur, a creation that underlines a solid following within the world of high jewellery and fashion. In this environ, Richard Mille doesn’t compete with other watches, but with couture and gemstones, the creations like the RM 19-02 and the fresh Bonbon pieces function as both product and manifesto for the brand, the latter also unashamedly fun.
The RM 1902
At twenty-five, the brand has no 20th-century historical archive to mine or heritage complication to reissue, as Richard Mille and his team look ever forward.
Which makes the latest lithe, manual wind RM 55-01 a fitting place to close. Worn by athletes, including the multi-hyphenate cyclist Mathieu van der Poel, the latest of a long line of partners that’ll put Richard Mille’s wristwear to the toughest of tests. The superlight watch is monochrome and skeletal, the grey version featuring pops of pink, and sits at the intersection of sport, material innovation and open-worked spectacle that has always characterised Richard Mille’s ethos. It is technical, specific, it is recognisable from fifty metres, and takes itself only as seriously as the moment demands. Twenty-five years in, that remains the sharpest summary of the proposition of a watch brand set apart.