Watches & Jewellery
Richard Mille's latest tourbillons are a stylish pair of fraternal twins
The RM 74-01 and RM 74-02 might share the same skeletonised heart, but they each have their own distinct personality.
Richard Mille is no stranger to brow-raising designs — designs that have just as much substance as they do style. After all, it's the first brand to successfully incorporate a material more commonly used in Formula One cars, Carbon TPT, into its complex watches — hence the veracious tagline 'a racing machine on the wrist.' But the brand isn't one to rest on its laurels, as evinced by its newest novelties, the RM 74-01 and RM 74-02.
Though the two watches are united by a common skeletonised heart and a tourbillon positioned at 6 o'clock, they were ostensibly made for two different style personalities. Of the two, the RM 74-01 is the quieter one — at least, by Richard Mille standards — with its intricate grey-toned face and contrasting red strap. But its exterior belies an extraordinary material: The bezel on the RM 74-01 is made of grey cermet, a material so light but hardy that it is often used in the construction of space shuttles. Grey cermet also boasts a hardness almost equal to a diamond; it has a Vickers rating of 2360, compared to a diamond's score of 2400.
And then there's the RM 74-02, with all of Richard Mille's exuberance. Instead of cermet, this model uses another proprietary material in the brand's playbook, Gold Carbon TPT. A riff on their signature Carbon TPT, the material marries the material's lightness and durability with the opulence of gold, a feat made possible through years of rigorous development. In making Gold Carbon TPT, layers of carbon fibres painstakingly alternated with sheets of gold leaf, a process that requires a dizzying amount of technological know-how and precision. The RM 74-02's alluring silhouette gets an added bit of texture — and mystique — with the addition of threads of 24k yellow gold.
The RM 74-01 uses the CRMT6 calibre, while the RM 74-02 uses the CRMT5, both in-house movements from Richard Mille. Both movements — which boast a power reserve of up to 50 hours — draw energy from a variable-geometry rotor, allowing its owner to personalise the watch and its winding based on their activities.
