To help launch its first women’s sports watch, the brand has enlisted six inspiring athletes, including Aurora Straus, Margot Laffite, Nelly Korda, Nafi Thiam, Yuliya Levchenko, and Ester Ledecká. One thing I appreciate about Richard Mille is that the brand reached out to women athletes to find out what they wanted in a sports watch. Yes, Richard Mille has always been a collaborative company. But to launch the Richard Mille RM 07-04 Automatic Sport – its first woman’s sports watch – the brand went the extra mile, working with six inspiring and influential athletes to share their experiences to help develop and define the attributes of these pieces.
Specifically, the brand reached out to two legends of motorsports – Aurora Strauss and Margot Laffite – as well as triple Olympic gold medalist skier Ester Ledecká, the top-ranked golfer Nelly Korda, and two stars of track and field, Yuliya Levchenko and Nafi Thiam. With their input, Richard Mills adapted these new models to the needs of its partners.
The result is incredibly lightweight (the total weight, including the strap, is only 36 grams) and ergonomic (the tonneau-shaped case measures in at the case measuring 30.50 x 44.95 x 10.35mm). So, no matter what sport you play, you needn’t worry about your wrist being weighed down.
Not all women have the same wants and needs. Thiam, Ledecká, and Levchenko needed a lighter piece, according to Amanda Mille. Whereas Korda, Straus, and Laffite wanted something more versatile.
Of course, because they come from Richard Mille, these watches are already visually arresting. But to give wearers more choice, the Richard Mille RM 07-04 Automatic Sport comes in six colorful flavors: black for the Carbon TPT model and dark blue, creamy white, green, mauve, and salmon pink for the models with the Quartz TPT casing.
For female enthusiasts, it’s the high horology that makes the biggest impact. Each of these editions comes equipped with a skeletonized in-house CRMA8 calibre automatic movement with high shock resistance, meaning that it’s a sports watch you can actually wear while playing sports. Plus, this open-work display is fully integrated into the movement to allow the wearer to appreciate the inner workings of the mechanism.
One of the most impressive achievements of Richard Mille RM 07-04 Automatic Sport is the flange (the part inside a watch case that supports the movement). Here it has been worked as if it were part of the movement.
The rest of the movement wasn’t a walk in the park either. According to Salvador Arbona, Richard Mille’s Technical Director for Movement, “We had to resolve a threefold technical challenge: extreme skeletonization, integration of the case with the movement, and inclusion of an inverted function selector.”