Watch Paparazzi

Royal Joaan Bin Hamad Al Thani spotted wearing Richard Mille

Prince Joaan Bin Hamad Al Thani, the younger brother of Qatar's Emir and one of the most consequential figures in global sport through his leadership of the Qatar Olympic Committee, was recently spotted on the wrist with one of Richard Mille's most technically demanding pieces: the Carbon TPT RM 65-01 Automatic Winding Split Seconds Chronograph. The sighting is no casual flex — this is a watch that demands serious horological attention.

The Richard Mille RM 65-01 was introduced in 2020 and marked a milestone for the brand: the first automatic split-seconds chronograph in Richard Mille's catalog. Powering it is the RMAC4 caliber, a skeletonized automatic movement beating at 28,800 vph with a 50-hour power reserve. The split-seconds, or rattrapante, complication adds a second chronograph hand that can be stopped independently to capture an intermediate time before snapping back to the running hand — a mechanism that requires a sophisticated isolating clutch system and significantly increases the movement's component count and assembly complexity.

The case material here is Carbon TPT, one of Richard Mille's proprietary composites developed with aerospace partner North Thin Ply Technology. The process layers hundreds of carbon filaments at 45-degree angles, each layer just 30 microns thick, then infuses them with resin under high pressure. The result is a case that weighs almost nothing, reads differently under every light source, and is unique in its surface patterning — no two Carbon TPT cases are identical. Measuring 44mm × 49.94mm, the RM 65-01 wears large but, given its material, remarkably lightly on the wrist.

From a collector standpoint, the RM 65-01 occupies meaningful ground. A rattrapante complication from any traditional Swiss manufacture commands respect; from Richard Mille, housed in Carbon TPT and driven by an in-house automatic, it represents the convergence of the brand's technical and material engineering at its most ambitious. Production volumes are tightly controlled, and the piece has developed a strong secondary market following since its launch.

Prince Joaan is a known connoisseur of high-complication timepieces, and the RM 65-01 fits naturally within a collection built for discernment rather than display. With a list price of approximately $310,000 and grey-market valuations currently pushing toward $920,000, demand has substantially outpaced supply — a pattern familiar across Richard Mille's top references.