When Camille Martin-Thomsen started shopping for her engagement ring with her then-fiancé, she found the process not as easy as she had hoped. The couple, who split their time between Brooklyn and Copenhagen, looked at rings from luxury jewelry houses in the United States and Denmark. Craftsmanship was important to Martin-Thomsen, 45, architect, vice-dean and teacher, as were the ethics behind the ring. “I was really frustrated at how vague people were sometimes about their diamond sourcing process,” she says. “I just couldn’t live knowing that in order to have beautiful objects, I was potentially going to harm other people or harm the earth.
They began researching diamonds created in the lab, learning that man-made diamonds are chemically identical to those mined from the earth, which means they have the same carbon chemistry and crystal structure. (They are also given the same grades as mined diamonds for carat, size, clarity, and color.) When Martin-Thomsen and her husband now saw that the prices for lab-grown diamonds were significantly lower than for mined diamonds. , the choice has become a no-brainer. Settings at New York-based Frank Darling start at $ 690, and non-personalized rings start at $ 1,490 for a half-carat baguette solitaire and go all the way up to $ 10,370. (Cartier’s Solitaire 1895 engagement ring comes in a variety of different karats and clarities; a yellow gold version with a 0.52-carat diamond and VS1 clarity costs $ 6,050, for example.) She liked it so much. the frames donated by Frank Darling, the couple ended up buying two engagement rings from the company.
Recently, a new generation of jewelry brands primarily online and aimed directly at consumers offering engagement rings with lab-grown diamonds has emerged, challenging the traditional idea that the most valuable jewelry should have stones sourced from Earth. Some also use recycled diamonds, which can refer to both the ancient stones themselves, as well as those that are cut into a modern shape. Unlike lab-grown diamonds, recycled stones generally cost the same as their mined counterparts, but jewelry makers and their customers value them because of their extremely small environmental footprint. Besides Frank Darling, brands present in the space include C1V1L, based in New York, Ceremony in Los Angeles and Kimaï, based in Antwerp, who counts Meghan Markle as a fan. Private equity firms like Huron Capital, which have invested in WD Lab Grown Diamonds in Washington DC, are betting on this trend. And so are celebrities: Leonardo DiCaprio invested in San Francisco-based Diamond Foundry when the company raised more than $ 100 million in 2015.
The lab process uses a tiny diamond, called a diamond seed (which sometimes comes from a mined diamond and sometimes a lab grown diamond), and one of two techniques to form a new diamond. The two processes used to create them – either high pressure-high temperature or chemical vapor deposition – mimic the conditions that create diamonds underground, but at a much faster rate. (Natural diamonds are considered a finite resource due to the limited supply close enough to the earth’s surface to access them.) Growing a one-carat diamond takes seven to ten days, while a three carat diamond requires about a month. Then they are cut into traditional shapes such as cushion, oval and round.
Most mining companies certify their diamonds with the Kimberley Process, which stemmed from a United Nations General Assembly resolution in 2000 to create an international standard for rough diamonds to ensure they are conflict free. Critics of the certification say that by focusing solely on conflict diamonds, it circumvents other forms of worker exploitation, including child labor and fair wages, and that its tracking stops after a stone is cut and polished. Some jewelry companies implement their own standards in addition to the Kimberley Process, such as the De Beers Group, which has created its own best practice principles, in addition to using their own monitoring programs.
For emerging brands, however, lab-grown diamonds may offer a more cost-effective way to produce fine jewelry. Blakely Thornton, 34, launched her jewelry company C1V1L in 2019 with an iconic design for everyday wear: gold and silver mesh necklaces and cuffs. Wanting to expand into engagement rings and other personalized high jewelry pieces, he ended up partnering with a supplier of lab diamonds, finding their prices more transparent than what he had seen in the natural diamond market. “Once customers understand that the lab is not cubic zirconia … I think of the lab as the Tesla of luxury jewelry,” Thornton says. “People who might buy a Mercedes think, I don’t want to have a V12 engine that will do [life] worse for my children.“
Understanding the exact environmental impact of lab-grown diamonds compared to natural diamonds is not entirely clear. A BBC Future Planet A report earlier this year attempted to assess whether processes developed in the lab are more sustainable than mining without reaching a definitive conclusion, citing a lack of transparency that makes it difficult to obtain accurate data on the everyone’s carbon footprint. A 2014 analysis by consulting firm Frost & Sullivan, for example, found that mined diamonds require more than twice as much energy as those grown in a lab, which is still a significant amount of energy.
The darkness is part of the reason why Jess Hannah, 29, and Chelsea Nicholson, 31, started their ring company, Ceremony, which uses only recycled diamonds and gold. (The founders don’t actually use the word “engagement ring” as they think it’s an outdated concept for some of their clients.) Ceremony’s clean, modern designs – many of which are meant to be unisex – echo to those of fine jewelry (and nail polish), J. Hannah, for which Hannah is the co-founder. “[Each diamond we use] is already in the supply chain, ”says Nicholson. “And so it’s something that we think we have control over.”
Beginning in the 1930s, the De Beers diamond company launched a marketing campaign that would make diamonds synonymous with engagement rings: giving diamonds to movie stars for their proposals, placing them in company publications and even bringing lecturers in high schools to talk about diamonds. In the 1940s, he launched his now famous “A Diamond is Forever” campaign. The company has invested in lab diamond technology primarily because it wants to designate lab diamonds as a component of casual jewelry, everyday pieces that aren’t necessarily considered an investment. Its production group, Element Six, has focused on lab diamonds since the late 1950s, and a consumer-oriented company, Lightbox Jewelry, was launched in 2018 and sells pieces with lab blue and pink diamonds in addition. of white. Speaking on why De Beers launched Lightbox, Group Executive Vice President, Consumers and Brands Stephen Lussier said: “I guess it would probably be fair to say that we were concerned about how which we saw [lab-grown diamonds] marketed because we didn’t think it was something that could stand the test of time.
Others are not so sure. Jessica Warch, 26, and Sidney Neuhaus, also 26, grew up in families in the Antwerp diamond industry. In 2018, they started their own lab-grown diamond company, Kimai, with fashion jewelry: ear cuffs, initial necklaces and ear climbers, one of which was worn by Meghan Markle’s last year. More and more, however, customers were coming to their homes for bespoke engagement rings, and now they are working on their own collection. “Our generation is increasingly concerned about where the products we buy come from,” the co-founders wrote in an email. “They want traceability, they want sustainable packaging, and they want to know that the people involved in the making of their jewelry are paid and work fairly.”
Some younger buyers don’t want all of the preciousness that is usually associated with buying an engagement ring; they find it intimidating and impersonal. Frank Darling’s website, the brand where architect Martin-Thomsen found his ring, is branded with playful art and blue font and makes ring shopping less of a momentous event. Customers scroll through their choice of settings, select a material (18k yellow, white or rose gold or platinum), their ring size and whether they want lab-grown or recycled diamonds. If they choose to purchase one of the crimp-only rings, then they can search the company’s diamond database to see the stone options. Customers can also opt for a personalized ring, as well as getting started with an at-home try-on kit that includes four styles of replica rings. “It’s a category that most people haven’t bought before, and walking into a jewelry store is intimidating,” says co-founder and CEO Kegan Fisher, 34, who started the business with her husband Jeff Smith, 38 years old, in 2019. “In your home, where it’s comfortable, no one is looking at you and you can take as many photos as you want. It’s low pressure. ”
And for millennials, known to prioritize experiences over things, price might be the biggest selling point. Fisher says, “You could spend twice as much money on [the diamond] be dug in the ground, or you couldn’t do it and you could go on a nicer honeymoon.
Copyright © 2020 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All rights reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8