MEMPHIS BELLES

Joy on the wrist is how Richard Mille Creative and Development Director Cécile Guenat would describe the RM 07-01 Coloured Ceramics collection. She chats with Charmaine Ho about what sparked the creation of this Memphis Design-inspired capsule

- Charmaine Ho

Known for hyper-masculine performance timepieces that present technical know-how with innovative, cutting-edge materials, Richard Mille has been gaining fast and steady ground with women for watches that offer technical prowess with the watchmaker's distinct brand of edgy femininity. And Cécile Guenat, Richard Mille's Creative and Development Director, is the person to thank for a lot of that.

Her debut collection of 2018, the RM 71-01 Automatic Tourbillon Talisman, set the bar high with its easy marriage of looks and function. The watch's gem-studded tribal design not only placed it far apart from the pack aesthetically, but also served to showcase its slim in-house automatic tourbillon skeleton movement-resulting in a watch that stands as a flashing beacon of the watchmaker's commitment to producing ladies' watches that sit comfortably, and confidently, within its haute horlogerie stable.

But if there's one collection that showed Guenat's intent to shake things D MILLE up, it was the Bonbon collection launched less than a year later. Inspired by the world of candy, the polarising collection tapped on childhood nostalgia with miniature lollies and candied fruits that saw fans setting up camp firmly on both ends of the love-hate spectrum. It was like nothing that the brand had ever released before (leaving many loyalists disgruntled), but the gamble paid off, with the entire collection reportedly being snapped up within two days of its launch. Guenat is clearly in tune with what the Richard Mille audience desires-as she should be, being the daughter of Dominique Guenat, Co-founder and Co-president of Richard Mille.