These two models give pride of place to Carbon TPT®, a high-performance material at once light and strong ensuring optimal protection of the movement. What’s more, its surface offers a striking appearance of damascene patterns and a moiré sheen. Its matt aspect intensifies the agreeable warmth it offers to the touch and to the wrist.
 

Carbon TPT® was chosen to the exclusion of all other materials for the case and strap of the RM 07-01 Automatic Starry Night. The bracelet—weighing just 29 grams—is offered exclusively for the women’s collection. Thrilling and fascinating, this watch displays a prong setting on the bezel and dial in a nod to the heavenly bodies, that highlights a profile gracefully enhanced with diamonds.

With the Starry Night setting, the brand demonstrates its mastery of machining the technical material. Unlike gold, which an artisan can shape with their own tools to make prongs for holding the gems, the hardness and resistance of Carbon TPT® require specialist CNC machines equipped with diamond bits to provide the mitraillage for setting. Hand-polished prongs in 5N red gold are produced separately and then embedded in the many stone settings of varying diameters destined to hold fast the piece’s 181 diamonds.
 

Exalted by the combination of two materials, for its part this RM 07-01 Automatic offers an entirely new take on the open-link bracelet whose hand-finished links weave together Carbon TPT® and 5N red gold. It combines a bezel and caseback in Carbon TPT® with a caseband in 5N red gold. In every respect a voluptuous bracelet offering a play of matt and shining effects, and also, most surprisingly, both suppleness and extreme strength.

These two new interpretations possess every one of the technical characteristics that have forged the reputation of the RM 07-01. Both are driven by the in-house Calibre CRMA2, a skeletonised automatic movement with hours, minutes and a variable-geometry rotor.
 

Mechanics and ergonomics once again exhibit superlative care, while the sensuous lines of the tonneau case, including the detailing on the tonneau-shaped clasp, reflect this defining architectural feature of Mille watches, even to the shapely crown in red gold.

The RM 07-01 Automatic Starry Night and RM 07-01 Automatic, with their proven and much-loved size and shape, combine beauty, comfort and technical prowess. With their modern aesthetics and bold silhouettes they beckon and fascinate. And with elegance and delight, they speak to the true reach of this iconic collection.

(Images © Richard Mille / Lila LeQuellec)