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Deep Dive: Richard Mille RM 72-01 Lifestyle Chronograph
When asked which individual has most revolutionised modern watchmaking, my response is unequivocal and unhesitant: Richard Mille. Because encoded in the three syllables of his name is a vision for creating watches invoking design codes, technical innovation and materials gleaned directly from the present and the future, which has reshaped our taste for watches, in the way Jayer reshaped our appreciation for wine.
“From the beginning the focus has always been wearability, which was expressed through the ergonomics of my cases and also my focus on extreme lightness,” says Richard. And that’s also not to say that his sapphire split-seconds chronograph tourbillons are not still the most in-demand ultra-complications on the planet. But Mille has long recognised the desire for slim, sleek and thin Richard Mille watches, as the world re-embraces classical proportions.
If you dig into his brand’s history, you’ll see that Mille was there before anyone else, offering up slim versions of his watches such as the RM 016 time and date, the RM 003 round two-hand watch and the RM 017 ultra-thin tourbillon, as far back as a decade ago. But it was his tonneau-shaped RM 67 that quickly became an icon upon its launch, especially in its RM 67-02 guise, which features bright and ultra-light Quartz TPT and Carbon TPT cases, and skeletonised movements with an architecture evolved from the RM 59-01 Yohan Blake.
Recently, the watch has been worn by World Cup and Olympic Games biathlon champion Johannes Thingnes Bø, who explained, “This watch is amazing. It is lightweight, shock resistant, incredibly ergonomic and slim enough that it never gets caught up in my rifle strap. For my sport, time is an incredibly important element because we have time limits for our shooting. With the Richard Mille RM 67-02 on my wrist, I always feel more mentally prepared and focused.”
While Richard’s outgoing, best-selling and massive wait-list-inducing RM 11-03 might be slightly too big to be worn by most women, the RM 72-01 occupied the perfect middle ground from a dimensional perspective, measuring in at 38.40mm by 47.34mm. (As there are no lugs in a Mille watch, the dimensions cannot be compared to a normal watchcase.) And I can tell you as a man whose primary loves are old American muscle cars, vintage motorcycles, automatic knives, cigars, Negronis and the opposite sex, every single desire impulse in my central nervous system was firing like spark plugs in a 5.4-litre supercharged Ford V8 when I set eyes on the watch. One of Richard’s great loves is, of course, race cars and he has always believed that “the best car designs create a dynamic tension between curvilinear female lines and straight masculine lines”. And this perfectly expresses the beauty of the RM 72-01: a watch that takes the Mille tonneau case and adds a touch of smoothness and fluidity, which is abruptly contrasted by the sharp vertical lines along the case side that lead the eye to a massive oversized crown and incredible futuristic-looking hexagonal chronograph pushers.
This is how a chronograph normally functions. You know that a watch works with a barrel containing a wound spring that is basically the watch’s gas tank that, through reduction gearing, ends up feeding power every fraction of a second through an escapement to an oscillator. The wheel just before the escape wheel is the fourth, or seconds, wheel. As its name implies, it makes a full rotation once a minute, and therefore provides the reading for the seconds.
In traditional chronographs, this wheel is connected to a coupling lever. Co-axial to the seconds wheel, usually sitting on the lever, is — for lack of a better term — a second seconds wheel. This wheel powers a wheel of the same gear ratio, called the drive wheel. When the chronograph is activated, the coupling lever shifts to bring the drive wheel in contact with the centrally mounted chronograph seconds wheel. On the dial side, the chronograph seconds hand starts to rotate. With each revolution, the chronograph wheel activates a mechanism which pulls the minute counter forward.
“Well,” says Salvador Arbona, Richard Mille’s technical director and the man overseeing the advancement of the in-house movement program, “it is, except for the fact that a chronograph is an extremely parasitical device. It consumes a great deal of power and also accentuates the variable torque in the mainspring as the power reserve starts to diminish. So if you leave your chronograph on indefinitely, the amplitude of the balance wheel, and thus the underlying timekeeping function of the watch, will become compromised. There have been solutions such as the vertical clutch that have been implemented, but this is for larger-scale, more industrial applications.”
Indeed, it is often the practice during servicing for vertical-clutch movements that the clutch section is removed and replaced. Arbona continues, “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. Second, because it is simpler, it takes up less space, so you are able to make a smaller movement. And third, 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.”
He explains, “This way, the torque directly from the barrel, where power is at its greatest, is being split three ways: to the timekeeping function, which also powers the chronograph seconds; to the chronograph minute counter; and, using reduction gearing, directly to the hour counter. Because the hour counter turns so slowly, it is not necessary to create an oscillating pinion. But the end result is a system that is far less parasitical and does not affect the underlying chronometric performance of the movement.”
Mille is being typically understated. I have always thought, in terms of design, execution and finishing, the Renaud & Papi-executed movement for Richard’s RM 004 to be the most beautiful chronograph movement I’ve ever seen. But the calibre CRMC1 rivals it and may even surpass it.
When I tell him this, Mille replies with a laugh, “You are too kind. From the beginning I’ve always created watches where you can understand how every part interacts with the other, because for me, all of this — the gears, the wheels, the barrel, the rotor, the column wheel — is what is beautiful about horology. The other benefit to our system is that we were able to make an automatic, integrated, column-wheel chronograph, with a world’s first, and with incredible timekeeping stability, but at the dimensions of 29mm by 6.4mm, which is quite a moderate size for a chronograph.” Accordingly, the 4Hz watch measures just 11.68mm in height, which, in comparison to the 16.15mm in height of the RM 11-03, is considerably slimmer.
And if the RM 72-01 and the calibre CRMC1 are a symbol of things to come, you can rest assured that Mille will continue to be the single most significant name in modern watchmaking for the next two decades as well. Like Henri Jayer, from a perspective of cultural impact on his chosen profession, Richard Mille has ascended into the realm of the immortals. At the same time, Mille is very much here and more relevant than ever, thanks to his insistence on underlying substance, integrity and authenticity in everything his brand creates, and the RM 72-01 is perfect proof of this.
Movement
Skeletonised movement, calibre CRMC1 with automatic bidirectional winding and hours, minutes, small seconds, date, flyback chronograph, function indicator and stop seconds; power reserve approx. 50-hours
Case
38.40 x 47.34 x 11.68 mm; tripartite case available in full grade 5 titanium, full 5N red gold, black TZP ceramic and white ATZ ceramic with a caseband in 5N red gold; pushers are black TZP ceramic and 5N red gold; water resistant to 30 metres, ensured by three Nitrile O-ring seals; assembled using 20 grade 5 titanium spline screws and abrasion-resistant washers in 316L stainless steel
Prices
5N Red Gold: CHF 215,000 w/o VAT
Titanium: CHF 170,000 w/o VAT[/td_block_text_with_title]