The Way

There’s a scene at the end of Pirates of the Caribbean, the Curse of the Black Pearl, where Captain Jack Sparrow is standing on the Black Pearl’s bridge, after having escaped his own execution. With one hand on the ship’s wheel and eyes fixated where the sky meets the sea, he says these words, under his breath, “Now, bring me that horizon.”

And as the camera slowly pans into a wide shot, with Captain Jack mumbling the words to, “Yo Ho, Yo Ho! A pirate’s life for me,” suddenly in that moment, he appears — boundless.

Sure, the Pirates of the Caribbean film franchise or the pirate genre for that matter, has little to do with Richard Mille. But that word, boundless, might possibly be the ultimate compendium of the ideals that define Richard Mille’s work. He seems to be boundless in his perception, boundless in his conception and, boundless in his execution. This is not to say that he is devoid of reality, on the contrary, Mille is probably more than aware of the present, than any other watchmaker alive today.

When Richard Mille had finally locked in the details of his first offering, you would imagine, his Time to Market strategy would’ve left any other corporation with multiple brain hemorrhages. He however understood fully that in creating a precision machine that would be unlike anything else on the market, he had to disregard time to ensure that what he unveiled was unquestionable in quality. As it was, the timepiece he had thought up would require more than a fair amount of time to construct, because for what he had thought up, there simply were no off the shelf parts. Everything, right down to balance spring and screws, had to be bespoke.

He simply refused to take short cuts and leave room for technical failure. So, what was the result of all this non-compromise? Well, when the RM 001 was eventually delivered to the store that was appointed to sell it, the watch lasted on their shelf for a grand total of thirty minutes.

How about making them in grade 5 titanium and engineering a security mechanism with no less than 38 components that keep the cufflink secure no matter how long or wild your day might be. These are essentially t-bar cufflinks with one push piece on the topside that opens two prongs on the bottom of the T to secure your cuffs. To release the prongs, you have two push pieces on the ends of the top of the cufflinks, which when pressed, retract the prongs. For anyone who can appreciate technical wizardry, the patented securing mechanism is already impressive. But add to this the fact that the brand finishes and decorates these in the same way they would one of their watches or movements; the fact that these use the same spline screws, and suddenly we have a better understanding for how Richard Mille makes no compromises.

A Challenging Force

In a recent article Wei Koh, founder of The Rake & Revolution, probably has said it best, as to just how much of a force of change Richard Mille’s ethos has been in the past two decades of watchmaking. Wei writes, “But more importantly, in the world today, Richard Mille watches have transcended their status as timepieces to fulfill a different role. His watches have ascended to become the symbols of something much more: a limitless life, an uncontainable dream, passion, resilience, performance under all conditions, individualism and fearlessness. The reason his watches are the subject of innumerable songs is that owning a Richard Mille has become that emblem of success that is unattained by most but dreamed of by everyone. In other words, it has become the fabric of optimism itself.”

Read the complete article mentioned, here: Richard Mille – 20 Years On

See in this matter what has to be appreciated is that Richard Mille, through his watchmaking, has transformed to become a force of influence that has transcended past horology. Richard Mille has evolved to become a lifestyle. Which has further opened the brand to explore objects of desire outside of watchmaking, such as the afore mentioned Richard Mille Cufflinks or even the RM S05 Mechanical Fountain Pen. The question that we’d like to pose on that note is, could this influence be wielded to address a deeper, more human, conversation? And in answering our own question, believe it or not, Richard Mille already has.

RM 72-01 Automatic Winding Lifestyle Flyback Chronograph

In September of 2020, Richard Mille retired the highly sought-after RM 11-03 and announced the RM 72-01 Automatic Winding Lifestyle Flyback Chronograph as the brand’s next big thing. Measuring in at 38.4 x 47.34mm, the watch was unveiled in a grade 5 titanium and an alternate full 5N red gold version, and a case profile that harkens to Mille’s earlier tonneau cases.

The dial of the watch features a completely non-traditional subdial layout for the continuous seconds and the 60-minute and 24-hour chronograph counters, all of which are color coded and labeled to visually separate time indications from that of the chronograph. For the movement, Richard Mille went the mile to create the brand’s first fully in-house movement and took the opportunity to as well address typical issues that tend to plague chronographs constructed using traditional mechanisms (horizontally coupling chronographs, particularly).

He went on to add, “So, we decided to use another solution called the oscillating pinion, which has three main advantages. The first is that it is a more direct and simple system; energy is being fed from a geared pinion directly from the seconds wheel to the chronograph wheel. Secondly, because it is simpler, it takes up less space, so you are able to make a smaller movement. Thirdly, it does not affect the timekeeping function. However, I say that with a caveat because our movement is the first chronograph in the world with two oscillating pinions specifically for this reason.”

The basic chronograph mechanism function of the CRMC1 movement, developed for the RM 72-01, is as follows. The seconds wheel drives an oscillating pinion that is slightly inclined when at rest. When the chronograph is activated, it moves to engage the central chronograph wheel. To further address the issue of chronographs losing power through the system where the seconds wheel drives the minute counter, the brand created a reduction gear that works directly with the barrel, driving a pinion that powers the chronograph minute counter, bypassing the remaining time-related gear train.

Read a more in-depth piece on the RM 72-01, here.

Now the reason why Richard Mille is able to contribute to such a sensitive present social dialog without having anyone bat an eyelid, goes back to the earlier words of Wei Koh’s. That Richard Mille, as a result of the ethos of the man who started it all and the brand that it’s developed into, has transcended to become an entity that encompasses a message and desire of, “a limitless life, an uncontainable dream, passion, resilience, performance under all conditions, individualism and fearlessness.” The RM 72-01 is boundless in this regard. And, therein, for all these reasons, both horological and cultural, that it’s easy to say, that the RM 72-01 is already poised to become the next Richard Mille — no scratch that — horological icon.