Footballer Benjamin Mendy spotted wearing a Richard Mille

Benjamin Mendy, left back for Manchester City and the French national team, was spotted wearing a Richard Mille RM 035-01 in carbon fiber, mounted on a vivid orange rubber strap — a combination that reads as much athletic statement as luxury choice.

The Richard Mille RM 035-01 measures 44.5mm and is built around Carbon TPT, a composite material produced by layering carbon fiber sheets at alternating 45-degree angles, then infusing them with resin under extreme heat and pressure. The result is a case material with exceptional rigidity-to-weight ratio that is visually distinctive for its characteristic marbled striations. The manual-winding caliber RMUL1 — a skeletonized, variable-geometry rotor movement — beats at 4Hz and delivers a 55-hour power reserve. Silver-toned hands and applied index hour markers float across the open-worked dial, providing legibility without compromising the visual drama of the exposed architecture beneath.

The RM 035-01 occupies a specific and significant position within the Richard Mille catalogue. It emerged as a direct evolution of the Rafael Nadal collaboration — the RM 035 family was engineered to survive the torque and impact forces generated during professional tennis. That sports-engineering pedigree translates directly into appeal for professional athletes across disciplines, who value a timepiece that is genuinely wrist-safe during high-intensity activity, not merely marketed as such.

Mendy is no stranger to high-profile luxury choices, and Richard Mille has become something of a default status marker within elite European football — particularly among players connected to the Premier League's top clubs. The orange strap selection adds a personal chromatic signature, echoing the kind of bold aesthetic decisions that define Mendy's off-pitch presence.

On the grey market, the Richard Mille RM 035-01 in Carbon TPT commands serious premiums. Values currently circulate between $175,000 and $235,000 USD, reflecting both the scarcity of Carbon TPT production and the sustained demand from the sports and entertainment worlds that Richard Mille has successfully cultivated over two decades.