Tag lab grown

While Gen Z-er’s seem to be growing less inclined to don engagement rings with large diamonds, it seems many of them may also be gravitating toward a more affordable, lab grown stone too.

After coming across TikTok user Zahné’s (@zzzahneee) video in which she explains why her engagement ring is not a diamond, Gen Z bride Ella Parr-Tierney (@ellaparrtierney) and her husband, Drake, felt compelled to do the same.

“My wedding band is diamonds and my engagement ring is a moissanite,” Parr-Tierney says on Sept. 22. For her and her husband, buying a diamond engagement ring wasn’t worth the potential debt it would put them in.

“At the end of the day, it is just a piece of jewelry,” she adds. “I want to buy a house before 25. I want to take a very long, expensive honeymoon throughout Europe. I want to buy designer bags. There are other things that I was more interested in spending my money on.”

Parr-Tierney claims that “you literally can’t even tell the difference” between her diamond wedding band and moissanite engagement ring, and that both “look amazing” stacked on one another.

“I’ve never tried to hide the fact that my ring is moissanite,” she says. “And there’s obviously nothing wrong with wanting a diamond, but I know a lot of people may think, ‘Oh my god, Drake balled out…all this money on a ring and they weren’t even out of college yet.’ No…we are somewhat, at least, trying to be financially responsible.”

So what exactly is moissanite?

According to the Moissanite Company (@themoissanitecompany), a jewelry shop founded in Australia, moissanite is a diamond alternative that was discovered by the Nobel Prize-winning chemist Henry Moissan in 1893.

“Today, naturally occurring moissanite is exceptionally rare and

Ahead of the holiday season, Pandora builds on its existing lab-grown diamond jewelry, debuting a trio of new collections that combine high-quality craftsmanship with environmentally-conscious design.

In an effort to “democratize” diamonds through ethical means, the latest jewelry pieces feature lab-grown stones with the same color, cut, clarity and carat as their mined counterparts, making them more affordable whilst also having a lower carbon footprint. Crafted using 100% renewable energy with 100% recycled silver and gold, Pandora presents three distinctive designs that shape the individual collections, named Nova, Era and Talisman.

Pandora Nova aims to showcase the unending sparkle of lab-grown diamonds. With each piece taking on a four-prong setting, the round and princess-cut stones are able to capture and refract surrounding light from each angle. This design is replicated in chains, studs and a 14 carat gold ring. Whilst Nova takes on a contemporary look, the Pandora Era collection subscribes to a classic feel featuring a minimalistic bezel setting. An understated array of single drop pendants as well as three-set stones arrive in a mix of 14 carat white gold and yellow gold.

Making a statement amongst the line-up is the Pandora Talisman collection. Comprised of five pendant designs – including a heart, star, moon and horseshoe – the respective pieces bring a luxurious take on Pandora charms with a touch of individuality running through each piece. The pendants come with matching chains or can be bought individually, allowing wearers to mix and match on bracelets or necklaces.

The new collection makes its debut in the brand’s latest campaign titled “Diamonds for All.” Exploring the way lab-grown diamonds break traditions through all-round wearability, the campaign sees Pamela Anderson, Justina Miles and other public figures share how these jewelry pieces bring elegance as well as

All About Tennis Jewelry

Long before Kim Kardashian lost her diamond earring in the Bora Bora sea, former world No. 1 tennis champion Chris Evert lost a precious piece of tennis jewelry, her diamond bracelet, mid-match on the U.S. Open Court. She then refused to resume play until it was found (a completely justified response, if you ask us). 

Knowing the history behind a key wardrobe piece, for style or for sentiment, is an important fashion lesson. For years, diamond tennis jewelry, like tennis bracelets, necklaces, earrings, and rings, were regarded as aspirational jewelry pieces that were largely unattainable to the everyday shopper — more country club accouterments than outright fashion-forward accessories. Though we can admit, we understand why the ladies who lunch were so attracted to traditional tennis-style jewelry. Besides the obvious appeal of dripping in diamonds, the simplicity of these designs makes the thin, singular strands of sparkles extremely wearable. Sure, tennis jewelry looks great when styled with a swoon-worthy black tie ensemble, but its versatility allows these pieces to pair just as effortlessly with dressed-down, everyday looks.

Lately, some of our favorite style icons have been sporting the tennis jewelry trend in a more casual way— and acing it. In the past few months alone, we’ve seen cool-mom Gigi Hadid, new-age-trendsetter Sofia Richie Grainge, and the quick-witted Morgan Stewart McGraw pair their tennis bracelets and diamond necklaces with everything from bikinis to blue jeans. Other celebrities have pushed the trend one step further, accessorizing with non-traditional tennis-style rings, earrings, and even belly chains. 

Tennis jewelry, more so now than ever, is a category that’s easy to obsess over and one packed full of must-have, never-take-off pieces—those well-worth an ocean floor scour and a game-suspending search. Take it from Rihanna, Jennifer Lawrence, Hailey Bieber, Taylor Swift, and

For people who want to get married, the diamond engagement ring is a tale as old as time—and advertisers and media companies alike make the rather expensive tradition seem inescapable. The slogans from South African diamond behemoth De Beers speak for themselves:

“A diamond is forever.”

“Is two months’ salary too much to spend for something that lasts forever?”

More From Popular Mechanics

 

“Show her you’ll love her for the next thousand years.”

On top of it, the marketplace for diamonds can be really confusing. There are grades of clarity and color that lead to an overall quality rating. And, of course, diamonds are very expensive. The International Gem Society reports that the average amount spent on a diamond ring in 2021 was $5,000. (At the iconic jewelry store Tiffany’s, a budget of $5,000 barely gets you into the diamonds, let alone the showy single diamonds people prefer on engagement rings.)

All of these reasons have driven consumer interest in lab-grown diamonds, and in lab-grown diamond engagement rings in particular. So, we spoke to an expert from the Gemological Institute of America (GIA) to learn everything you need to know about lab-grown diamonds—the production methods, the colors, the intangibles, and more. They say lab-grown diamond rings can cost up to 20 percent less than natural diamonds, which would knock that $5,000 ring down to $4,000. It’s not a Black Friday doorbuster percentage of discount, but that’s a lot of money to save.

Lab-Grown Diamonds vs. Natural Diamonds

Sally Magaña is a research scientist and the manager of diamond identification for the Carlsbad, California-based GIA, which now has locations around the world; the GIA creates and upholds standards and education for jewelers around the world. Today, one of its key concerns is telling apart lab-grown diamonds from natural diamonds,

With the global jewelry market in retreat, Pandora just delivered a solid second-quarter performance, with organic revenues up 5% to $850 million and like-for-like (LFL) revenues advancing 2%. This brought first-half revenues up 3.5% over the previous year to $1.7 billion.

Having expected challenges in fiscal 2023, Pandora initially guided on a -2% to +3% change in revenues this year, but given its strong performance so far, it raised guidance to between +2% to +5% by year-end.

“We outperformed the market,” CEO Alexander Lacik shared with me after the earnings call. “There’s a lot of uncertainty out there, with the Ukraine war, rising interest rates and consumer sentiment dropping like a stone. It’s a fact that people have less disposable income to go around, so against those macros, we showed sequential improvement.”

And Lacik is counting on that sequential improvement to pick up pace through the rest of the year after it drops three new collections of lab-grown diamond jewelry into the U.S., Canada, Australia and U.K. markets, with Mexico and Brazil to follow in time for holiday.

The new range includes rings, earrings, bracelets and necklaces and for the first time, it is presenting lab-grown diamonds in its flagship charms, what the company calls the “universe that is at the heart of Pandora.”

“We have over 600 million customers coming to our stores and website every year and we know the vast majority of them are very interested in buying a diamond but can’t afford mined diamonds. That’s where Pandora

All right, I have a tiny confession to make: I have not always been the classic solitaire ring’s biggest fan. Not for lack of appreciation (I am borderline obsessed with gemology) but rather because my personal style has tended to steer me toward non-traditional silhouettes and styles—my engagement ring is a signet, if that helps paint a picture.

At its core, each piece of jewelry is wildly individual. The meaning assigned to a gemstone is personal and unique, as is the way it’s styled into your wardrobe. This rang especially true when a certain ring entered my orbit and completely changed my POV on the solitare style. This, my friends, was not just any ordinary solitaire style, it was Pandora’s Nova 14k White Gold 1.00 Carat TW Lab-Grown Diamond Ring.

I’ll get into the various bits and bobs that make this luxe ring so amaze in a moment, but on a more general note I was delighted and surprised by how easy it was to incorporate into my daily rotation. The moment I slipped this round brilliant lab-grown diamond onto my right hand, I was shook by how good it made me feel. Confident! Chic! Ready to hail a cab! It was—not to be totally cliché—love at first wear. Lately I’ve been layering it with a slim hammered-gold band, which feels aligned with my vibe (we love a mixed-metals moment).

So whether you’re in the market for an engagement style or you find joy in sporting a lab-grown diamond ring for ~any ole day~, keep scrolling for the details on this gorge forever jewelry.

The market for lab-grown diamonds is exploding this wedding season, putting larger gems onto more hands than ever.

But some say that shine can wear off when the synthetic stones quickly lose their value.

Pandora, the largest jeweler in the world, is now very much in the diamond business.

Last year, the company that’s well-known for its accessible charm bracelets began selling lab-grown diamonds set in rings and other jewelry.

The diamonds are offered at prices Pandora says make sense for their slice of the jewelry market.

“What we are seeing a lot is people that always dreamed but never had a chance to buy a diamond. Now they can,” said Luciano Rodembusch, Pandora’s North American President.

At Pandora, a one carat diamond ring goes for less than $2,000, while a 2-carat piece sells for roughly $5,000, a fraction of what similar, mined stones would cost.

Pandora says its lab-created diamonds are manufactured in U.S. facility using 100% renewable energy.

“Ours are going to be one-fifth to one-seventh of the price,” Rodembusch said.

According to The Knot, the popularity of lab-grown diamonds has doubled since 2020.

In 2022, more than a third of engagement ring center stones were manufactured, not mined.

Regardless of the source, the diamonds are visually and chemically the same.

But, some argue that there is a key value difference.

Olivia Landau, co-founder and CEO of custom jewelry company The Clear Cut, sells only natural diamonds, which she says hold or even increase in monetary value.

“Lab grown diamonds hold zero value. They’re mass produced. You can create an endless supply of them,” Landau said. “They’re kind of the fast-fashion of diamonds, whereas natural diamonds do hold inherent value.”

The Clear Cut does use lab-grown diamonds but it actually gives them away for free,

After weeks of destination shows for press and hand-picked high jewelry clients, Haute Couture Fashion Week in Paris saw a shower of diamonds across Place Vendôme and some of the city’s most luxe hotel suites, with the latest fine and high jewelry offerings from the big jewelry houses. If real trends can be identified up in the rarified world of high jewelry, yellow diamonds was one of them, as Graff’s signature colored stone popped up also in the disco-inspired collection at Messika, Buccellati, and De Beers’s Metamorphosis collection. From Tasaki in the gardens of the Ritz, to Chaumet’s celebration of nature via Gemfields’ designer showcase; houses explored the gifts of the natural world. Boucheron however, took a different tack, presenting one of the most original collections of the season, that saw Creative Director Claire Choisne at her audacious best.

Chaumet

With the Jardin de Chaumet collection, the Paris heritage house went back to its design roots, as Nature’s jeweler par excellence for over two centuries. Celebrating the bounty of the harvest, the wheat motif famously seen in the 1811 Wheat Ear Tiara tiara becomes a delicately rendered necklace with a contemporary touch in the form of a geometric diamond pendant, while the ruby and diamonds Feuilles de Vigne earrings graze the shoulders. Elsewhere, yellow diamond pansies, vibrant ruby tulips, and opal tree bark gleam amongst winking white diamonds.

Boucheron

Creative Director Claire Choisne

How do many lab-grown diamond fine and high jewelry companies that claim to be environmentally sustainable provide evidence to back such claims for their designs?

New York-based Grown Brilliance does all of the above, and more. Embodying a new wave of beautifully designed and evidence-based sustainable lab-grown diamond jewelry, this brand produces six stylistically diverse collections a year. While these are classics with an artistic twist, they are also of notably high quality: 95% of Grown Brilliance diamonds are I+ in color, and VS2 or higher in clarity. Led by founder and Creative Director Akshie Jhaveri, the brand’s supply chain, including packaging, is carbon-neutral, thanks to offsets purchased from the United Nations carbon off-set platform. In a transparent move, Jhaveri supplied this writer with sustainable bona fides including proof-of-sustainability certificates for her brand’s diamond growing, cutting, polishing and jewelry manufacturing facilities. As of this writing, Grown Brilliance is being audited by the sustainable industry standard organization SCS Global Services. The goal is to obtain SCS certification as a carbon-neutral or climate-neutral jewelry business.

Equally of note, Grown Brilliance is pioneering the e-tailing of sustainable lab-grown diamond jewelry by enabling customers to have their custom designs rapidly created with artistry and technical precision — at prices that compare exceedingly well to those of their competition As Jhaveri explained, “Our website’s Truly Custom tool allows people to design their unique lab-grown diamond ring, which we produce within 14 days, all without charging for this bespoke service.” (Grown Brilliance also offers Truly Custom necklace, earring and bracelet design options.) Too discreet to mention