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Mille will race his Lola T70MK3 (pictured) and his Matra in the Le Mans classic in July this year
Paradoxically, Mille lives a quiet existence in the countryside with his wife and two children in an 18th century chateau in Brittany called Domaine of Monbouan. He is often seen zipping around the country lanes in his Aston Martin Vantage or his Mercedes, popping into the local village for fresh bread at weekends. His factory is close by in the picturesque Suisse Jura, where he sketches each RM design before it is handmade by his team of engineers. While other watchmakers are creating aggressive and highpriced men’s watches, Mille says he deliberately announced 2014 as “the year of the woman”. “In the past three years, women’s watches have rocketed. It now represents 20 per cent of our business and will probably double in the two to three years to come,” he says. Mille plans to create dedicated corners for women in each of his boutiques and open 10 new shops around the world this year. “We will also soon have a bigger flagship store in Paris,” he adds. Mille says he will limit himself to five or six new creations this year and try to lower the average price of his timepieces from $207,000 to $138,000. “I have always tried to break the rules,” he says. “When I started, expensive watches had to be heavy and made of gold. I decided to go for lightness and carbon.” Since then he has succeeded above his own expectations,
58 may / june 2014
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“I like speed; I have always liked speed. I know it is quite a caricature to say this as a man but it is true.”
surprising the market and collectors with his innovative designs. “I wanted to escape from the traditional watch ghetto and make a modern product. Why would someone buy in 2014 a replica from a 1780 timepiece?” Mille was one of the first watchmakers to convince sportsmen like tennis star Rafael Nadal and golf pro Bubba Watson to wear his watches while playing tournaments. When Watson clinched his second Masters title in April, he did it wearing a Richard Mille watch - the revised RM 038 Bubba Watson Victory Watch, no less, created to celebrate his 2012 win.