For Those About to Rock: A Closer Look at the Richard Mille RM 66 Flying Tourbillon

Richard Mille is a brand that doesn’t pull any punches, and the new RM 66 Flying Tourbillon is its most over-the-top models ever.

Just look at the pictures of this tourbillon – one of watchmaking’s most virtuosic complications – sharing face-space with a golden hand throwing the heavy metal horns sign. It’s Jimmy Page playing a guitar solo with a violin bow. It’s Eddie Van Halen shredding on Michael Jackson’s “Beat It.” It’s Randy Rhoads ripping through Ozzy Osbourne’s “Crazy Train.”

The rock-and-roll lifestyle is both opulent and rebellious. It’s flying on a private jet and trashing hotel rooms, and this watch pretty much sums up that duality. And like our favorite rock-and-rollers, the new RM 66 Flying Tourbillon also has sparks of artistic genius.

So, let’s dive into this horological mosh pit to see what all the fuss is about.

Richard Mille spares no expense, effort, or imagination in making some of the world’s most impressive, complicated, and wildly technical watches. Thus, when it comes to watchmaking, the brand falls within a realm typically known by a French term, “haute horlogerie,” or “high watchmaking.”
 

Avant-garde designs with skeletonized (or openworked) dials and movements are common at this level, and so is expert hand finishing down to the complicated clockwork’s last tiny component – and this is what you can expect from a Richard Mille watch. Combine this expertise with the brand’s over-the-top designs and technical (often colorful and extremely lightweight) materials, and the result is an unmistakable look.
 

The new RM 66 Flying Tourbillon is a riff on those portions of the brand’s DNA (including its signature tonneau case shape). However, what sets this model apart from any other watch in the Richard Mille catalog is the skeletal hand, rendered in 5N red gold, throwing the heavy metal horns sign.

This hand gesture has had a variety of meanings throughout different cultures. For instance, some use it to ward off bad luck. However, in North American pop culture, it’s more a representation of the horned devil and, therefore, rebellion from the establishment.

Formed by extending the index and pinky fingers while holding the middle and ring fingers down with the thumb, most metalheads credit the use of the horns hand sign to the late Ronnie James Dio, although he refused to take credit.
 

“I doubt very much if I would be the first one who ever did [the horns],” Dio told Metal-Rules.com in 2001. “That’s like saying I invented the wheel; I’m sure someone did that at some other point. I think you’d have to say that I made it fashionable. I used it so much and all the time, and it had become my trademark until the Britney Spears audience decided to do it as well. So, it kind of lost its meaning with that.”

So, while mainstream pop stars like Spears may have appropriated the gesture, the RM 66 Flying Tourbillon aims to misbehave and bring back its demonic power.
 

At first glance, It looks very punk, yet it’s obvious that a lot of skill was involved in rendering the five digits of the hand. First, the fingers are milled; then, they are sent to the master engraver to be hand finished. Finally, once the painstaking process of deburring and polishing every contour of the bones and joints is complete, this hyper-realistic miniaturized hand is assembled. Of course, this is an oversimplification of the entire process, but you get the idea.
 

For more information about the RM 66 Flying Tourbillon, visit Richard Mille’s website.