STYLE Edit: How did Richard Mille create the thinnest watch in history? Inside the craftsmanship of the Swiss watchmaker’s technical masterpiece, the RM UP-01 Ferrari
- Swiss luxury watchmaker Richard Mille created the thinnest watch in the world in partnership with carmaker Ferrari, with a new, patented ultra-flat escapement
- A mere 1.75mm thick, the RM UP-01 Ferrari is powered by a manual winding movement that weighs as little as 2.82 grams and displays time like a dashboard of a sports car
To make the thinnest watch in history, you need to break through a few horological barriers.
You do not create something that groundbreaking by just tinkering at the edges, following horological orthodoxy while making incremental improvements. Instead, to create a timepiece of ultimate thinness, you need to torch all notions of conventional watch design, go back to the drawing board and reimagine what’s possible.
That takes time: the movement of the RM UP-01 Ferrari alone took up to 3,600 hours to develop. Rather than stacking components on top of each other, as in most watch movements, it spreads them flat, integrating the movement into the case so that the two support each other.
The baseplate and bridges are made of grade 5 titanium for its strength; the escapement has been reimagined in a patented new design, with the small plate of the balance and the dart replaced by an elongated fork; the movement is regulated by a variable inertia balance with six weights; and the two crowns have been integrated into the case as movement wheels.