Michelle Yeoh has a killer watch collection

10 Mar 2023
Michelle Yeoh

No one epitomises this new era of women wearing killer watches more vividly than Michelle Yeoh. Indeed, the watchmaking industry has come a long way since the ‘pink and shrink it’ approach that used to dominate the women’s offering from the world’s most prestigious watch brands. 

Mike Marsland

Today, watches designed specifically for women are a thriving design genre in their own right, and while plenty of brands have great relationships with queens of showbiz – Breitling and Charlize Theron, Longines and Kate Winslet, Omega and Naomi Harris, IWC and Gisele, Cartier and Blackpink’s Jisoo, we could go on – the Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon actor stands in a league of her own in the horology stakes. 

Stephane Cardinale - Corbis

Michelle Yeoh's partnership with Richard Mille began after the watchmaker was introduced to Yeoh by her partner, Jean Todt, the French motor racing executive and former director of Scuderia Ferrari. “I used to only wear very big, masculine watches, because for me it is a statement,” Yeoh said to Richard Mille in an interview. “A watch isn’t just about telling the time. I don’t agree that women should only wear small watches.”

Clearly feeling Yeoh's vibe, the first collaboration with her that Richard Mille dropped came shortly after the pair met – resulting in the RM 051, which was conceived of as a jewellery watch with symbolic decorative features and highly technical performance capabilities. The RM 051 has a baseplate made from onyx. Meanwhile, a diamond-covered phoenix inside the dial phoenix and moves in harmony with the barrel, power reserve and tourbillon.

Yeoh recently accessorised a Schiaparelli gown with a Richard Mille RM 07-01 ‘Intergalactic’ watch to collect the best female actor award for her role in Everything Everywhere All At Once at the Screen Actors Guild, becoming the first woman of Asian descent to do so in the award’s history. Now very much seen as the frontrunner for the Best Female Actor Oscar, we're intrigued to see what watch Yeoh will rock to the ceremony – because her unique combination of haute horology and haute couture has totally upended our idea of what a woman's watch can and should be – and how they can look. 

The ‘Intergalactic' RM-07-01 combines the curvaceous forms of the brand’s signature tonneau case with the mind-bendingly advanced technical and material savoir-faire for which it is famous. The brand’s proprietary Carbon TPT is both super light and super strong – not unlike Yeoh herself (it's called ‘synergy’) – and has a lovely variegated pattern upon which diamonds have been sprinkled for that ‘intergalactic’ dazzle.  Under the bonnet, the watch packs as much haute horological firepower as any man’s watch and features the CRMA-2 movement with 50 hours of power reserve and an hours, minutes and variable-geometry rotor – all of which has been skeletonised.

JC Olivera

All in all it’s out of this world. Next stop: the Oscars.

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