Cover RM HJ-02 Blue Ballet (Photo: Richard Mille)
RM HJ-02 Blue Ballet (Photo: Richard Mille)
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Richard Mille’s RM HJ-02 celebrates the confluence of high jewellery craftsmanship and mechanical excellence
When Richard Mille describes the RM HJ-02 In-House Automatic Tourbillon as a ”second chapter”, the implication is clear: the brand’s interest in high jewellery is a continuing story, not a footnote, but a continuing exploration of watches as wearable art. The extremely limited collection of just 12 timepieces, arranged across four colourways, is the most coherent argument the brand has yet made for treating high jewellery as structural logic rather than surface embellishment.
That argument begins with the case. Developed over more than a year, it draws from art deco’s geometric vocabulary while refusing its symmetry. Sharp transitions, layered planes and asymmetrical interruptions break up the familiar tonneau silhouette. Each timepiece, whether pink, violet, blue or green, is set with 1,399 precious and ornamental stones—diamonds, rubies, Paraíba tourmalines, chrysoprase and mother of pearl among them.
Above RM HJ-02 Blue Ballet (Photo: Richard Mille)
Above RM HJ-02 Blue Ballet (Photo: Richard Mille)
RM HJ-02 Blue Ballet (Photo: Richard Mille)
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Snow-, grain- and bezel-setting techniques are deployed not for mere decoration but to control visual rhythm; stones are positioned to direct how light and colour move across the planes of the case. Achieving this complex geometry and kaleidoscopic artistry requires nearly 700 hours of work—for every watch.
Above Gem setting (Photo: Richard Mille)
Above RM HJ-02 Pink Pursuit (Photo: Richard Mille)
Gem setting (Photo: Richard Mille)
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At the heart of each RM HJ-02 sits the new in-house calibre CRMT2, developed concurrently with the case so that mechanical and jewellery decisions could inform one another from the outset. The gem-set white gold baseplate and bridges, the fast-rotating barrel, the variable-inertia tourbillon—each element is finished and integrated as part of a single compositional vision. The gold rotor, running on ceramic ball bearings, is also gemset, elevating functionality into aesthetic expression.
Above RM HJ-02 Green Gambit (Photo: Richard Mille)
RM HJ-02 Green Gambit (Photo: Richard Mille)
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Behind this vision of colour, light and form is Cécile Guenat, head of design and development, whose training at the Geneva University of Art and Design informs an approach that refuses the conventional boundary between haute horlogerie and fine jewellery. A woman, designing a highly technical watch for women and leaning into the power and femininity of jewels—we love to see it. Her perspective lends the collection a distinct sensibility—one that embraces the expressive power of jewels without compromising technical ambition.
The RM HJ-02 is, in the end, what happens when a woman who thinks in colour and form is handed the full resources of an in-house manufacture. The result doesn’t need a closing argument. It makes its case in light.
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