Watch Paparazzi

Rapper Huang Zitao spotted wearing Richard Mille

Huang Zitao, the Chinese rapper and actor who built a second career as a streetwear-adjacent luxury tastemaker after departing K-pop group EXO, was recently spotted wearing one of the rarest and most deliberately provocative timepieces Richard Mille has ever produced: the titanium RM69 Erotic Manual Winding Tourbillon with Oracle complication. With only 30 examples released, a sighting is genuinely uncommon.

The Richard Mille RM69 is built around a manually wound tourbillon movement executed in grade 5 titanium — the same aerospace alloy Richard Mille has used across its performance-oriented cases since the early 2000s. The baseplate and bridges follow the brand's signature tonneau architecture, skeletonized to reduce mass while maintaining structural rigidity. Power reserve sits in the conventional RM range of approximately 48 hours. But the movement specification is almost secondary to what the RM69 actually does.

The Oracle complication is the watch's defining mechanism. Activating it sets three engraved grade 5 titanium cylinders — functioning on the same rotational principle as Tibetan prayer wheels — spinning independently before coming to rest and displaying a randomly generated explicit phrase across the dial window. Richard Mille produced the RM69 in a declared edition of 30 pieces, each phrase combination drawn from a pre-set lexicon of erotic language. It is, by any measure, one of the most conceptually audacious complications in contemporary watchmaking.

For collectors, the RM69 occupies a peculiar niche. It is technically serious — a hand-wound tourbillon in aerospace-grade titanium with genuine micro-engineering behind the Oracle mechanism — yet its entire purpose is theatrical provocation. That combination appeals to a specific kind of buyer: someone with the means and confidence to treat a six-figure watch as a conversation piece rather than a statement of classical taste. In secondary market terms, pieces from ultra-limited Richard Mille runs rarely surface, and when they do, premiums over list are significant.

Huang Zitao's affinity for Richard Mille is well established; the brand's fusion of engineering credibility and entertainment-world spectacle maps directly onto his public persona. At a UK list price of £570,000 — placing the USD equivalent well into the high six figures — the RM69 Erotic Tourbillon is not a casual acquisition. On Zitao's wrist, it reads less as flex than as collector conviction.