Richard Mille’s RM63-02: travelling without moving

Of all the horological complications, the worldtimer is surely the most glamorous and cosmopolitan. A worldtimer enables travelling without moving, the magical feeling of being in several places at the same time: whether you’re travelling between Midway and La Paz or Anchorage and New Caledonia, suddenly you know when it’s cocktail hour in the Azores or breakfast time in Karachi.

A tribute to contemporary expedition, Richard Mille’s RM 63-02 takes an elegant approach to the worldtimer classification; its complication and in-house-developed CRMA4 automatic calibre ‘transcending time and place’. Indeed, both its design and materials speak a fluent, jet-setting internationalism.

Now the RM 63-02 reinterprets the traditional worldtimer movement where crown or pushers are used for adjustment, positioning this function directly on a rotating bezel instead. Deploying the micro-blasted 5N red gold bezel mounted on ball bearings, a traveller instantly lands in a new city and time zone with a simple twist. A wheel integrated into the bezel and connected to the hour-wheel simultaneously adjusts the local time to that of the city at 12 o’clock and updates the time for the 23 other cities.

The RM 63-02’s case is satin-finished in 5N red gold with polished bevels, and a grade 5 titanium case provides a handsome mise en scène for graphics in rose pink and burgundy. The dial’s two tones distinguish day from night.

A large scarlet crown, made of polished titanium and surrounded by a collar coated with Alcryn (a material offering the feel of vulcanised rubber), strikes a pleasing, constructivist note, while a push-button located at 4 o’clock selects the watch’s different functions, similar to a car’s gearbox: N – Neutral, W – Winding, H – Hand Setting.

Things are even prettier on the luxe industrial case back. A skeletonised open-work bridge offers a fine view of technical and aesthetic harmony. Polished angles, drawn edges, micro-blasted bridges coated with PVD (physical vapour deposition) and electro-plasma treatments, the circular-brushed wheels, the function selector’s distinctive titanium disc—all conspiring to reschedule the new travel essentials agenda; passport, wallet, boarding pass… Richard Mille RM 63-02 Worldtimer.