Richard Mille is a Swiss watch company founded in 2001 by Dominique Guenat and Richard Mille, specializing in luxury watches. The brand made a name for itself in the luxury and ultra-luxury watch sectors thanks to its innovative materials and technology, joining the Fondation de la Haute Horlogerie in 2007. From early 1999, Richard Mille and Dominique Guenat drew up their plans and the basis for the Richard Mille brand, in partnership with Guenat S.A. Montres Valgine and APR&P (Audemars Piguet, Renaud et Papi). Defining the brand concept over the next two years, combining the world of cars, aeronautics, and sailing with the high-tech aspects of innovation, resistant materials, and accuracy, eventually designing the future Richard Mille watches and subjected them to reliability and precision testing. The brand presented its first watch, the RM 001 Tourbillon at Baselworld in 2001, a manually wound mechanism fitted with a ribbed tonneau-shaped case that revealed the mechanism, the main features of the brand's visual identity. It included a tourbillon calibre, a power-reserve indicator, and a torque indicator, with a strap made from leather and the crystal from mineral glass, it had a water resistance of up to 50 meters. The following year in 2002, Richard Mille presented the RM 002, a technological development, and the first watch in the history of watchmaking to feature a titanium baseplate. This was followed later that year by the RM 003, a dual time zone tourbillon, and by the RM 004 flyback chronograph in 2003. In 2005, the watch brand launched the RM 007, the first ladies' watch in the Richard Mille collection, and by the end of 2018, the brand presented Richard Mille's first creation entirely supervised by a woman, the RM 71-01 Automatic Tourbillon Talisman equipped with the new CRMT1 automatic caliber house. A large portion of Richard Mille's inspiration comes from racing cars and the study of shock-resistance, the concrete applications of which have made it possible to improve the rigidity of the baseplate, reduce friction, and give the watches very high shock-resistance. The concepts and materials inspired by Formula 1, which provided the basis for the first Richard Mille watch (RM 001), are one of the cornerstones of the brand's philosophy.