Michelle Yeoh wears a Richard Mille RM 07

On the staircase of the Young family house in Crazy Rich Asians (2018), Eleanor Young climbs toward the camera in a green silk blouse, one hand on the rail, and on her left wrist sits a tonneau-cased watch on a black strap. The French watch site Montres de Luxe identified it as a Richard Mille RM 07, the brand's ladies' model, and Bob's Watches, cataloguing the film's wrists, recorded the detail that matters: Eleanor's "diamond Richard Mille" was "the actress' own." Michelle Yeoh did not borrow the part's most expensive prop. She supplied it.

The watch came with history. Yeoh, Malaysian-born and married to the motorsport executive Jean Todt, has been a friend of Richard Mille for many years, collaborated with the brand on the RM 051 Phenix tourbillon, and appears today on Richard Mille's own friends-and-partners page. The brand only launched in 2001 and prices most of its watches in six figures. When the film premiered, Yeoh went further than Eleanor ever does on screen: the Hollywood Reporter clocked her on the "jade carpet" in a one-of-a-kind RM 19-02 Tourbillon Fleur set with 15.16 carats of rubies and white diamonds, valued at 1.6 million dollars.

Jon M. Chu's adaptation of Kevin Kwan's novel, the first film from a major Hollywood studio with a majority cast of Chinese descent in a modern setting since The Joy Luck Club in 1993, took 239 million dollars worldwide after opening in August 2018. Yeoh's Eleanor is Nick's mother, the family's gatekeeper, who measures Rachel Chu and finds her wanting; five years later Yeoh won the Best Actress Oscar for Everything Everywhere All at Once. And Eleanor's watch was not the film's only private loan. Henry Golding's Nick wears the actor's own vintage Omega Seamaster De Ville, which makes Crazy Rich Asians a rare production where the cast's personal watch collections did the costuming.