A lighthearted watch can act as “a real tonic in a kind of glum time,” one collector suggested. Richard Mille may top the trend with his million-dollar Smiley model.
Anyone who believes that watchmaking should be serious business — and reflect centuries of history and tradition — should stop reading now.
In recent months the watch industry has been introducing fun, irreverent timepieces, and the kookier, the better.
Headlining the trend is Richard Mille’s RM 88 Automatic Tourbillon Smiley, a tribute to 50 years of the Smiley face image, which Franklin Loufrani, then a French journalist, designed and registered in 1971.
Priced at 1.1 million Swiss francs (the equivalent of about $1.16 million)
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