Watch Paparazzi

Rapper Huang Zitao spotted wearing Richard Mille

Huang Zitao, the Chinese rapper, actor, and one of the most serious watch collectors operating in the entertainment space today, was recently spotted on the wrist with what is arguably the single most culturally resonant piece in the entire Richard Mille universe: the RM 57-03 Dragon Tourbillon, a white gold, baguette-diamond-set opus limited to just 36 examples worldwide.

The Richard Mille RM 57-03 is built around the brand's signature manually wound skeletonized tourbillon movement, the CRMT2, which beats at 21,600 vph and offers approximately 30 hours of power reserve. The baseplate and bridges are machined from grade 5 titanium and NTPT carbon composites, keeping the movement light despite its visual density. What sets the RM 57-03 apart from virtually any other tourbillon in production is the dial architecture: an articulated dragon sculpted in 18-carat red gold, its scales and body assembled from individually cut and polished sapphire segments set invisibly — meaning no metal prongs are visible between stones. The sapphire's hardness (Mohs 9) makes hand engraving and shaping the material an extraordinarily labor-intensive process, requiring specialist artisans working under magnification for hundreds of cumulative hours.

The case itself is white gold, its bezel and lugs invisibly set with baguette-cut diamonds, elevating the already extravagant piece into high-jewellery territory. Richard Mille introduced the RM 57-03 as a successor to the Jackie Chan-associated RM 57-01 and RM 57-02, refining the dragon motif with each iteration toward greater three-dimensionality and chromatic richness. The red gold and sapphire combination on the -03 reference represents the most accomplished execution of that vision.

For collectors, the RM 57-03 occupies a category of its own: it is simultaneously a complications watch, a sculptural objet d'art, and a cultural statement. Its 36-piece limitation, combined with the extreme production difficulty, means examples almost never surface publicly. Huang Zitao's enthusiasm for high-complication and high-jewellery Richard Mille references is well-documented, and the RM 57-03 represents the logical summit of that collecting trajectory — a watch that speaks directly to Chinese cultural heritage through the dragon motif while sitting at the technical frontier of Swiss watchmaking.

On the secondary market, the RM 57-03 Dragon Tourbillon commands prices well into eight figures in certain currencies. Given its rarity and the near-impossibility of sourcing one through any conventional channel, grey-market pricing is largely theoretical — pieces transact privately, when they transact at all.