WORDLTEMPUS - 5 February 2013
Robin Swithinbank
I was using the London Underground the other day – as a Londoner, that's something I do a lot – when I found myself in a station I didn't know. Unfamiliar with its layout, I got lost trying to find my way out. If you don't know the Underground, it's very old, has 270 stations and seems to have been mapped out by Escher (it wasn't). But you learn its idiosyncrasies and it's therefore a bit discombobulating when it leaves you in a muddle.
Which is exactly how I feel when I come face to face with watches made by Richard Mille. I've handled thousands of luxury watches in my time and like to think I know my way around the things. But put a Richard Mille in my hands, and it's like starting all over again.
Presented with this year's collection of head-scratchers last week, it was all I could do to stop myself asking questions like “What the heck is that?”; “What on earth does it do?”; and “It's made of what?” It was like giving Meccano to a talking baby.
But I'm being unfair – to myself, that is. You see, I'm pretty sure Richard Mille wouldn't have it any other way. The young but rapidly expanding techno-brand is at the forefront of horological boundary-pushing, reshaping the mould by using materials and techniques no one's ever thought of using in watchmaking before. The whole point is to make people – so-called experts included – ask questions, and because of that I find it fascinating.
The watch brand to watch?
And it seems I'm not alone. According to the latest World Watch Report, which was compiled by the Digital Luxury Group (DLG) in Geneva and filed on day one of SIHH (if you've not read it, do), Richard Mille is the fastest growing brand in fine watchmaking by interest. In 2012, global internet searches for the brand were up 61 per cent year-on-year, a country mile ahead of Vacheron Constantin, second in the chart at 26 per cent.
Florent Bondoux, DLG's head of strategy and intelligence, said something intriguing about these findings, “Assuming Richard Mille manages to keep its momentum and growth rate, the company could easily become one of the top five haute horlogerie brands by 2020. This is a brand with a strong breadth of exclusive products and an equally strong PR-driven marketing approach focused on events and celebrity endorsements. Richard Mille is a brand to watch.”
And I agree. But try not watching. Seriously. This year's lineup of timing devices (the word “watch” seems too quotidian to apply here) is utterly bonkers – and quite brilliant. Outside Palexpo in Geneva, where SIHH was held a couple of weeks ago, there was a long line of billboards advertising a wide range of brands showing at the fair. In the middle was a florid green and yellow watch with four bridges that spanned its open-worked dial like a frog's foot grabbing an unsuspecting lily pad.
On closer inspection, I noted it was Richard Mille's new RM 59-01 Tourbillon Yohan Blake, named after the Jamaican sprinter and current Olympic 100- and 200-metre silver medalist. There must have been half a dozen other billboards alongside it, but do you know what? I honestly couldn't tell you what any of them was advertising. That's how much of your attention the brand demands.
Ugly? Expensive? Frankly, so what?
Now, some will say that's because the watch is brash and ugly. And they're entitled to that opinion. But what of it? It's also incredible. Its asymmetrical case is made of a translucent composite that's injected with carbon nanotubes and looks like Paleolithic amber. The frog hand is made of “anticorodal PB109 aluminum,” an alloy comprising aluminum, magnesium, silicon and lead. These, according to the brand, make the watch and its hand-wound tourbillon that much more flexible and shock-resistant – useful if you're the second-fastest man ever to walk the earth and you're planning on wearing it when you defend your title at this summer's World Championships in Moscow.
And so it goes on. The sapphire crystal used in the RM 56-01 Tourbillon Sapphire's case takes 1,000 hours to machine, has a melting point of 2,303 kelvin and at 1,800 Vickers is eight times more resistant to abrasion than steel. The watch has a torque indicator and its strap is made of Aerospace Nano, a trademarked, transparent, stretchy material produced by a Swiss company called Biwi that specializes in rubber, plastic and silicon. The everyman will probably wonder why he should care about all this, but who cares about the everyman? At £1,338,500 (€1,578,500), he won't be buying one. For that matter, few will. Richard Mille is only making five.
5,000G, 10 days and one ant's leg
Then there's the ingenious RM 58-01 Jean Todt World Timer Limited Edition. To set local time, you spin the bezel so the right time zone is at 12 o'clock and then the hands skip to the correct time – just like that. Ha! That's the kind of functionality that makes you smile and wonder why no one ever thought of it before. Oh, and lest we forget, the RM 58-01 is also a ten-day tourbillon, which by my calculations makes it equal second with Patek Philippe's Ref 5101 in the longest tourbillon power reserve stakes (Vacheron Constantin's 2012 14-Day Patrimony Traditionnelle holds the record). Nerdy information, I know, but significant.
So, it's breathless stuff. And this is before you've had a sniff of the RM 036 Tourbillon G Sensor Jean Todt, which has a mechanical G Force indicator; or the feathersome RM 27-01 Tourbillon Rafael Nadal, which weighs just 19 grams yet can withstand 5,000G thanks to a system that suspends the base plate inside the watch by hanging it from four braided steel cables. Each of these cables measures a weeny 0.35 mm in diameter, which, if you didn't know, is also the thickness of an ant's leg.
I could go on, but my head hurts. Just believe me when I say there are seven new models in the Richard Mille collection this year and that there's something amazing about each one of them, something previously unfathomable, something that means you can't take your eyes off it because you're so bewildered by it, but so impressed. A brand to watch? Hell, yes.
