Darkish Stars: Richard Mille and its Intergalactic Girls Watch
A stunning series of ladies’ watches from Richard Mille dazzle in a beguiling chiaroscuro of high-tech materials, precious metals, and stones.
Since 2001, when Richard Mille unveiled its first watch, the RM 001 Tourbillon, the Swiss brand has become a byword for innovation in the areas of design, technology and the development and use of the most advanced, high-tensile and lightweight materials. Among the latter is Carbon TPT, an incredibly strong and light composite that’s exclusive to the brand.
Given the signature tonneau case shape employed in the majority of its timepieces and the widespread use of skeletonised dials that puts the entire mechanism on display, it’s also fair to say that a Richard Mille watch looks and wears like no other. Indeed, it comes as no surprise that when establishing the company bearing his name, founder Richard Mille was less inspired by the traditional products of Switzerland’s watchmaking industry than he was by Formula 1 and sports cars – hence the tagline that continues to characterise his watches: “A racing machine on the wrist.”
That relentless urge to explore the limits of technology, and create watches that are at once highly accurate, perfectly functional and utterly unique in appearance, yet capable of withstanding the most severe forms of punishment imaginable, remains central to the company’s ethos. Yet being painstakingly built by hand in the smallest quantities, they’re also exquisite examples of the contemporary watchmaking arts, where traditional craftsmanship are as highly valued as cutting-edge technologies.
Take, for example, the series of ladies’ RM 07-01 Intergalactic watches, at whose heart beats the skeletonised in-house CRMA 2 calibre, but with a dial centre and Carbon TPT bezel dotted with tiny diamonds and specks of gold that sparkle like the stars in a faraway galaxy. Or, exuding an interplay of golden light and shade, there’s the ladies’ RM 037, with a case constructed from ultra-rare Gold Carbon TPT, a precious lightweight hybrid of the noble metal and Richard Mille’s own carbon composite, which is created with several layers of both materials set at an angle of 45 degrees, a process whose development took four years.
Gold Carbon TPT is also employed on another version of the RM 07-01, which, like the RM 037, features a dial centre of black diamonds set in gold that encircles a central onyx. Adding a further touch of individuality, the Carbon TPT surfaces on all the watches feature a distinctive waved damascene pattern unique to each watch.
Richard Mille may have set out in its aim to produce the world’s rarest and most sought-after timepieces by defying convention, yet equally central to that ambition is an uncompromising focus on craftsmanship and opulence. Technically advanced and yet exquisitely beautiful, this remarkable array of ladies’ watches could well represent the highest expression of that aspiration.
Source: Prestige Online
