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Entrepreneur Oweis Zahran spotted wearing Richard Mille

Entrepreneur Oweis Zahran was recently photographed wearing one of the most aggressively artistic timepieces in contemporary horology: the Richard Mille RM 68-01 Tourbillon Cyril Kongo, a 30-piece limited edition retailing at $685,000. The sighting is a reminder that at the extreme end of the Richard Mille universe, a watch functions as much as a collected art object as it does a timekeeping instrument.

The RM 68-01 was developed in close collaboration with Cyril Kongo — born Christophe Gué — the Paris-born graffiti artist whose vivid, calligraphic style has placed him in galleries from New York to Tokyo. The partnership with Richard Mille is not merely cosmetic: Kongo applied his signature aerosol and brush technique directly to each case and dial by hand, working across the NTPT Carbon and Quartz TPT composite surfaces that Richard Mille pioneered for their extraordinary strength-to-weight ratio. The result is that every single one of the 30 references is a unique, numbered artwork — there is no 'standard' RM 68-01 variant.

Beneath the hand-painted exterior, the RM 68-01 houses a manual-winding skeletonised tourbillon movement — calibre RM68-01 — visible through the characteristic tonneau-shaped case architecture. The movement features a variable geometry rotor, functions selector, and a power reserve of approximately 48 hours. The baseplate and bridges in grade 5 titanium keep the overall weight minimal, consistent with Richard Mille's motorsport-influenced engineering philosophy.

For collectors, the RM 68-01 Cyril Kongo occupies a specific and defensible niche: it is not a standard production Richard Mille dressed up with surface decoration, but a genuine artist collaboration where the art process was integrated from the design stage. The 30-piece edition size places it among the most tightly allocated references the brand has ever released, and the irreproducible nature of each piece makes direct grey-market comparison genuinely difficult.

Oweis Zahran has cultivated a reputation as a serious collector of ultra-limited and bespoke horology, and the RM 68-01 Cyril Kongo fits that profile precisely. At $685,000 list, Richard Mille positions this piece squarely in art-acquisition territory, and on the secondary market examples have commanded significant premiums when they surface at all.