Earlier this year, Richard Mille introduced its first women’s focsued sports watch into its expansive catalog of explicitly avant-garde timepieces. The new RM 07-04 Automatic Sport is a series of six watches all with a uniquely bold design that champions functionality. To create synchronicity between sport utility and aesthetics, Richard Mille consulted with six influential, professional athletes: Aurora Straus, Margot Laffite, Nelly Korda, Nafi Thiam, Yuliya Levchenko and Ester Ledecká. Their insights and opinions helped define the attributes of the watch that were most critical for optimizing its appearance and usefulness simultaneously. Each of the six models takes notes from one of the aforementioned athletes, whose accolades include two motorsport icons, the second-best golfer in the world, two track and field stars, and a Winter Olympics triple gold medalist.
A design consistency between the six models is their exterior, which is undeniably characteristic of Richard Mille design with a sleek tonneau case silhouette that is decorated with screws along the bezel. Paying mind to the constraints imposed by activity, the watches also use an ergonomic design approach, perhaps made most obvious by its slight 36 gram weight. That impressive metric is also inclusive of the strap, making the RM 07-04 the lightest model in the new range of Richard Mille watches. The dimensions of the case are 30.50 x 44.95 x 10.35 mm, and the brand opts for Quartz TPT as the material for five of the models and Carbon TPT for the remaining watch. Both materials are quite robust, offering a strong resistance to extreme temperatures and transparency to electromagnetic waves.
Playing to the general design trends of sportswear, each of the six cases varies in color, sporting creamy white, mauve, salmon, green and dark blue in Quartz TPT while a black shade grounds the Carbon TPT iteration. This RM 07-04 Automatic Sport kind of versatility and variance is quintessential for sportswear, both in its use of vivid hues and all-around lightness. Keeping consistent throughout the series is a grade 5 titanium crown that is micro-blasted, polished, and protected by a rubber crown guard that varies in color depending on the model. Similarly, there is a simple push piece at 4 o’clock that allows the wearer to toggle between the neutral, winding, or time setting positions that is made from colored Quartz TPT bound in titanium. The vivid contrasts in color across each design contributes to its sportive ethos, furthered by the fabric strap which secures each model. Though perhaps a less favored material for high-end watches, the soft strap is certainly critical to ensuring the modest weight of the entire model.
Offering yet another glimpse into the Richard Mille design code is the dial, which evokes an almost industrial sportiness with its open-worked, skeletonized appearance. Rather than using typical hour-markers, the periphery of the dial includes minute markers in five minute increments to ensure legibility in spite of the intricacy of the main dial. The only other feature that grounds the time keeping functionalities of this watch is a slim, color-coordinated minutes track on the outside edge of the dial. Beyond the two hands indicating the hour and minute, the function select feature is indicated by a dedicated hand at 5 o’clock, all of which share an accent color dependent on the model. With its gears on display, the RM 07-04 Automatic Sport exudes the toughness of the athletes who inspired it, all while maintaining an air of lightness via the movement’s negative space.
The powerhouse behind this sporty new collection is the Caliber CRMA8. As visible through the dial, it is a skeletonized automatic winding movement that maintains basic timekeeping functionalities, indicating hours and minutes. Its baseplate and bridge are made from grade 5 titanium, a feature that lends itself to the lightness of the entire watch. The RM 07-04 Automatic Sport balance wheel uses variable inertia to ensure reliability in the case of shock and wrist movement, furthering its strong sports watch position. The movement also offers a power reserve of approximately 50 hours with additional utility coming from a function selector that allows the wearer to select either the winding, neutral, or hand-setting function.