Richard Mille, a former Mauboussin executive, founded Richard Mille SA in 1999 with the goal of creating "a racing machine on the wrist." The inaugural reference, the RM 001, launched in 2001 and was developed in partnership with Audemars Piguet's Renaud & Papi laboratory (APRP, then owned by AP, now Giulio Papi's independent atelier). The watch introduced the design vocabulary that would define Richard Mille for the next two-plus decades: a tonneau-shaped case (48 x 39.7mm) that hugs the wrist, a skeletonised movement with exposed bridge architecture, and a manual-wind tourbillon visible through a large aperture at 6 o'clock.
Only 17 pieces of the RM 001 were produced, all in platinum cases, and the launch price was approximately CHF 135,000, which in 2001 was an exceptional price for a modern tourbillon from a brand with no previous watchmaking history. The internal movement carries the RM001 designation, features manual winding, and displays exposed gear trains, bridges, and the tourbillon cage through a skeletonised dial-plate architecture rather than through a conventional dial aperture. The visible anglage, bevelled bridges, and machined pillars were all hand-finished by APRP to the highest watchmaking standards.
The RM 001 set the design template that subsequent Richard Mille references would iterate on. The 2002 RM 002 added baseplate architecture and a titanium version; the RM 003 dual-time followed; the RM 008 split-seconds chronograph; the RM 011 Felipe Massa made the brand famous through its Formula 1 partnership; and the RM 27-01 Rafael Nadal (2013) put the silhouette on the wrist of a professional tennis player in active competition. By 2020 Richard Mille had become the dominant force in ultra-luxury watchmaking by revenue, with a small-volume high-price business model that contrasted sharply with the traditional Swiss haute-horlogerie houses.
Original RM 001s are vanishingly rare on the secondary market; examples trade at over CHF 1 million when they appear at auction. Phillips sold a piece in 2022 for CHF 1.16 million. The RM 001 is now recognised by collectors as one of the most important wristwatches of the 21st century, both for establishing the Richard Mille brand and for demonstrating that a new independent could enter Swiss watchmaking at the absolute top price tier and succeed commercially.