Light as a Feather: Richard Mille’s New Time-Only RM 55-01 Has a Calibre Weighing Just Five Grams

Richard Mille is the ultimate dichotomy. The brand’s watches are some of the boldest on the market – commanding, impossible to miss from across the room. Yet, the Maison’s release strategy is entirely the opposite – nonchalantly slipping into our inboxes when you least expect it. If its watches are a yell, its drops are a whisper.

Quietly entering the chat among the Watches and Wonders frenzy, Richard Mille presents the “new” RM 55-01 (though it may look suspiciously familiar to the discontinued RM 055 “Bubba Watson”). Still, there’s much to unpack in this model equipped with a new manual-wind skeletonized calibre weighing under five grams. Let’s dig in.

I would never think to call Richard Mille a minimalist. Its audacious designs have a decidedly maximalist wrist presence, and the brand is known for playing with a myriad of materials and juggling a plethora of complications. However, for its latest model, we have a surprisingly restrained execution displaying just simple hours, minutes, and seconds.
 

The time-only RM 55-01 presents the Maison’s featherweight approach to a bare-bones architecture, with an airy structure built around the ultra-light, openworked RMUL4 movement, seemingly floating within. Yes, here the UL nomenclature aptly stands for “ultra-light,” and the aforementioned architecture has been stripped down to the essentials: barrels, going train, and oscillator.
 

Weighing less than five grams, this calibre has been carefully designed to fit perfectly within the watch’s case, which has intentionally conservative dimensions (37.95 x 10.75 x 47.33 mm), while optimizing both wrist comfort and visual balance. In addition, the choice of manual wind versus automatic is equally intentional – without obstruction from an oscillating weight, light can flow freely through the movement.
 

The new RM 55-01 is offered in three colorways: carbon TPT, grey quartz TPT, and white quartz TPT. In case you need a refresher, the TPT composite (short for Thin Ply Technology) is a staple for Richard Mille. Unlike more common composites used in watchmaking, this specific composite has a rough, layered texture, which we see in the RM 55-01 across the bezel and caseback.

Moving on to the style options, the carbon is a sleek, fully blacked-out iteration that provides a beautiful contrast with the skeletonized design.
 

The so-called grey version appears suspiciously blue (at least across the bezel) but still offers a nice, soft, neutral hue regardless.

Finally, the white version delivers everything you want in an all-white model – this is my personal favorite, but I’m a sucker for an all-white watch, not just for summer but winter as well.

All three versions of the RM 55-01 are available today and join Richard Mille’s permanent catalog. While the Maison lists pricing upon request, the model is reported to have an approximate retail price of CHF 155,000. For more information, head on over to the Richard Mille website.