Richard Mille teamed up with French street artist Cyril Phan, aka Kongo, to add a his graffiti style to every component of their RM 68-01 Tourbillion model. First, together with the research and development team, they selected an asymmetrical case that added extra punch. Then they tested the paints – how well they adhered to the titanium movement, and how much they weighed, so as not to throw the pieces out of balance or impede the tourbillon mechanism!
Richard Mille’s RM 68-01 Tourbilion Cyril Kongo
Kongo said it took a year of experimentation to become comfortable spray painting tiny individual movement parts and baseplates within a two-square-inch canvas and to build the tools to do this.
Microscopic letter stencils, barely visible to the naked eye, cut from thin sheets of metal created graffiti art never found on a timepiece before. Kongo also employed very special pens for his airbrush system that deposits paint drop by drop to apply the particular paint on the metal surfaces.
Richard Mille’s RM 68-01 Tourbilion Cyril Kongo
For each watch, French artist wanted to inflect a graphic vocabulary with letters, words and colors – basically the same as painting on a canvas. Never before has a graffiti taken shape on the bridges and baseplates of a watch, making the Richard Mille RM 68-01 a truly contemporary piece of art within the timepiece market.
A watch decorated with mini graffiti using a mini airbrush, the Richard Mille RM 68-01 Tourbillon Cyril Kongo is yours for $685,000.
