Richard Mille's unique watch creations

All or nothing: Richard Mille loves extremes.

For a long time, transparency was not exactly considered a virtue in Switzerland. Neither banks nor the manufacturers of fine timepieces were inclined to reveal the secrets of their complicated inner workings. It was a tradition that Frenchman Richard Mille set out to break when he founded the company bearing his name in Les Breuleux in the Swiss Jura in 1999. Two years later, the tinkerer, who - fascinated by mechanics - dissected his watches as a child, launched his first model, the "RM 001." And instead of hiding the movement behind the dial as usual, Mille declared gears, plates and springs to be part of the design. Since then, the functional details have been style-defining, just like the elongated tonneau shape of the case he opted for back then. And when it comes to materials, the technology enthusiast, who is passionate about airplanes and race cars, is always looking for the unusual. Right from the start, he experimented with materials from the automotive industry such as carbon and titanium. A perfectionist through and through, Mille, who worked as a manager at Seiko and the Paris jeweler Mauboussin before starting his own business, established a new development approach in his company: never should a financial team be able to object - for example, that a material was too expensive - before a watch was produced. The price, usually in the six-figure range at Mille, was always to be set at the end.

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