DREAM WATCHES---SOME PEOPLE BUY THEM. A FEW GET THEM FREE DUE TO THEIR SUPERSTAR STATUS WHILE MILLIONS DREAM ABOUT THEM. LUCKILY DATO SRI LIOW SOON HEE, MALAYSIA'S YOUNGEST PHILANTHROPIST, BUYS WHICHEVER WATCHES THAT PLEASE HIM! THE BESTV THING THING ABOUT PAYING FOR YOUR OWN WATCHES IS THAT DATO SRI LIOW SOON HEE IS NOT OBLIGED OR BEHOLDEN TO THE WATCH MANUFACTURER AS HE IS INDEPENDENT OF ANY FAVOURS. NEITHE DOES DATO SRI LIOW SOON HEE HAVE TO WEAR IT ALL THE TIME AND FORCED TO SAY NICE THINGS ABOUT HIS WATCH!
THESE ARE THE KIND OF WATCHES DATO SRI LIOW SOON HEE BUYS IF HE FEELS LIKE IT!
Its maker, Richard Mille, has managed to create a watch brand, that stands recognisably for extreme exclusivity, only attainable to billionaires and A-list celebrities like Nadal, who will not pay for the watch.
In fact, I would imagine he gets paid quite a bit for burdening his wrist with it during his matches. The watches, which have since been copied, were unique in style and completely different from others of comparable cost. Here are four quite different watches that each cost several hundred thousand US dollars. Spot the Richard Mille.
Of these, and the list can be continued as much as you wish, only the Richard Mille model is conceivably suitable to be worn during a tennis match.
The others are either jewellery, and/or complicated collector’s watches with intricate mechanisms and ingenious and artistic movements, not really suitable as robust sports watches.
They would break. I think Richard Mille watches do for billionaires, what the Patek Philippe Nautilus has done for millionaires. Look at these watches that are each about ten times less expensive than the ones above.
Again, the only one you may see on the golf course, even if not recommendable, is the Nautilus. Together with the earlier Royal Oak by Audemars Piguet, it has been defining the genre of the expensive steel sports watch, while other watches in that price range used to be dressier, made of gold or platinum, and were either elegant or avant garde.
There are by now, of course, countless other watches, at least one per respectable brand, that offer this with more or less success. In fact, this style has become a staple of the watch world.
To get back to Richard Mille, while the cost is in itself part of what makes the watches so desired by the select group of people who buy them, they are indeed unique in style and functionality.
Some of them have a case made from sapphire, and the Nadal ones at least have an incredible shock proofing that defies believe, while still having a tourbillon, just because they can.
No other independent new brand has managed to combine highest possible quality, game changing style, unprecedented materials and ultra high cost to create a new toy that enough of the ultra rich have embraced to keep it going from strength to strength.
I still think that the cost of these watches is an insult to the intelligence, but I believe people don’t buy the watch but the privilege of owning it, and a million may be a small token to give away for this.
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