This year, Revolution turns 20. Two decades of chronicling watches, people and ideas have given us a front-row seat to a remarkable story: how an age-old craft has both preserved its soul and reinvented itself for the 21st century. To celebrate, we’ve chosen over 100 names and milestones that, for us, define the era so far. From leaders to watches, you can see the whole list here.

If I had to select one person as the greatest innovator of the new millennium, it would have to be Richard Mille. Because he didn’t just create one of the most important brands in watchmaking, or a business that turns over 1.5 billion Swiss francs with just 5,600 watches a year (meaning he has an average price of 275,000 Swiss francs per timepiece), he also completely changed the way watches looked forever. That he did this with nothing more than his imagination and, as legend goes, from a bar of soap that he had carved into his tonneau-shaped case one night and the courage to go where no one else had ever gone, is extraordinary.

RM001

Mille introduced the concept of modernist watchmaking, based on a design language inspired by Formula 1 cars and auto-racing that became the single, most influential force in the early part of this millennium. There is not a single brand on the planet, including Patek Philippe, Vacheron Constantin and Audemars Piguet, that can say they were not influenced by what Mille did. In the first decade of the millennium, this extra ordinary design was also backed by the most fearless watchmaking focused around shock resistance and light weight that we had ever witnessed. He was the first to put his complicated watches on the wrists of elite athletes in competition and, to this day, continues to define this category.

RM-UP-01 Ferrari

As tastes now shift and with his children in place at the helm, it will be interesting to see how the Richard Mille brand evolves to respond to the prevailing focus on smaller-sized, craft-driven, artisan and métiers d’art oriented watchmaking.