Richard Mille Just Launched Its First Ever Women's Sports Watch Collection
Richard Mille is arguably at the top of the list when talking about some of the most supreme, high-end, brilliant-performing luxury watches. With its watches being valued at 6 and 7 figures, it is worn by some of the top professionals around the globe, including actors, and athletes, among others. For athletes, the two most important features of a watch is it being lightweight and shock resistant, and hence we see many top-level athletes wear a Richard Mille watch as they shine in their respective sports. While the brand has long been a supporter of a wide range of women athletes, it has not had a women's sports watch in its catalog until recently. Known as the Richard Mille RM 07-04 Automatic Sport, the all-new women's sports watch collection was created in collaboration with six top-class female athletes. The collection makes its colorful debut with six different colorways, each one dedicated to each of the six female athletes who helped create this collection.
In order to design the new RM 07-04 Automatic Sport, Richard Mille collaborated with Aurora Strauss and Margot Laffite from the world of motorsports; Yuliya Levchenko and Nafi Thiam, who both compete in track and field; Ester Ledecká, a skier who has won the Winter Olympics gold medal three times; and Nelly Korda, one of the best female golfers around. It took three years to form this collection, with the input coming from all six of the athletes representing the face of this collection. The RM 07-04 Automatic Sport offers the same performance features as the Richard Mille men's sports watches, but they offer it in a much more compact and ultra lightweight way.
Featuring the iconic, Richard Mille signature tonneau-shaped case, the new RM 07-04 Automatic Sport is 10.35 mm in thickness, 30.5 mm in diameter, and 44.95 mm wide (from lug to lug). Of the six new watches, five of them are crafted with different colors of Quartz TPT. The remaining final model is crafted using black Carbon TPT. Embracing a skeletonized profile, sapphire crystals are fitted into the dial side as well as the caseback of the watches. Twenty spline crews made from grade 5 titanium are used to assemble the case. In professional sports, how much a watch weighs is extremely important for athletes; hence, the six athletes requested a lightweight watch. With that in mind, this new Richard Mille timepiece weighs just 36 grams. Bear in mind that this even includes the integrated fabric straps and Velcro-style closures.
A rectangular metal plate made from grade 5 titanium, featuring an engraving of the model's number, is located at the 9 o'clock side of the middle case. In addition to this, a large rubberized winding crown in grade 5 titanium is positioned at 3 o'clock and offers easy access to the movement. Further, an oblong button, framed in grade 5 titanium and crafted with a contrasting color of Quartz TPT, is located just below the crown at 4. This oblong button serves as a function selector switch, a unique feature found on many Richard Mille sports timepieces.
The function selector switch enables the winding crown to be disengaged from the movement when not in use - this is the whole concept around the function selector switch. This allows the shock resistance to be increased significantly. With these new watches, Richard Mille has achieved an impressive shock resistance of 5000g.
Most skeletonized watches don't have dials; however, these new Richard Mille RM 07-04 Automatic Sport models have a contrasting flange comprising the outer chapter ring, the hour marker, the minute track, and the markings for the function selector indicator. The internal sections of the flange are in a shape exactly like the bridges of the movement that sit below it. At first, they look to appear as a single piece, but they are actually sitting on top of the baseplate of the movement. A pair of centrally-mounted skeletonized hands display the hours and minutes. A smaller hand located at 5 shows the current winding mode of the crown, which is either neutral (N), winding (W), or hand setting (H).
Functioning as the heart of the new Richard Mille RM 07-04 Automatic Sport watches is the Calibre CRMA8 automatic movement, which runs at a frequency of 28800 vph (4 Hz) and a power reserve of circa 50 hours. This movement is distinctive as it is known to be the most compact self-winding caliber in the current collection of Richard Mille. The baseplate and bridges of the movement are crafted from micro-blasted grade 5 titanium with a black DLC finish. Further, platinum is used for the rotor, which is mounted on ceramic ball bearings. A further addition to its shock resistance is a free-sprung balance with a variable inertia adjustment system. Just like the other exceptional Richard Mille movements, the CRMA8 comes with the brand's specialized gear teeth profile and fast-rotating mainspring barrel, which helps guarantee the best possible performance.
Conclusion:
It is great to see that Richard Mille, after so many years of working with female athletes, has finally launched its first-ever women's sports watch collection. With six different colors, these watches are artistic in nature. One of the most challenging tasks in watchmaking is to reduce the size of something without compromising performance and quality. Still, Richard Mille does it every single time without a single compromise in the functionality of the watch.
