Haute Time Sits Down with Richard Mille at Dinner Honoring Brand Ambassador Natalie Portman

Haute Time sat down with Richard Mille at a recent dinner at The St. Regis New York to fête the exciting addition of the brand’s newest association, award-winning actress Natalie Portman.

Mille dove into a humble conversation on the way he sees his brand and those that are closely associated with it. “I would say personally I don’t choose the term ‘ambassador’ because it’s very marketing-oriented,” Mille said. Instead he explained that for Richard Mille, a brand ambassador is more of a friend. “When we work together with my friends like that, we share a passion.”

And these friends are in a partnership with a watchmaker that earned its place as one of the most celebrated luxury watch brands in the world. “At the beginning it was a big risk, because I opened a new segment of the market,” Mille explained. “It was a real adventure.”

Since its inception, the brand has cemented itself on the wrists of the most wealthy and most discerning clients, those unmoved by hefty price tags. “The price is not a positioning choice,” Mille explained. “The price is the result of the technical and aesthetic set of choices. [For] each watch, the average [percentage] of parts that go to the garbage, that are wasted, is between 35-40 percent.”

With that, Mille divulged his favorite aspect of the detailed RM timepieces. “What I love maybe most [about] this success is that the watch itself is a very low-profile watch,” he said, using words like ‘clinical’ and ‘serious’ to describe his timepieces. “I love this combination of something low-profile and full of technique, and I love to do extremely light watches.”

Check out the full video interview with Mille here.

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