Diamonds are back in a big way. Not that interest in possessing these icy adornments ever waned. But we’re talking engagement rings here, crowned by the kinds of rocks that give added meaning to the phrase “diamonds are forever.” The rocks are getting bigger.
How big? “It’s not exactly the kind of thing you talk about, because it’s so rude to come right out and ask,” says one newly married 27-year-old matron who is surrounded by friends and acquaintances in the marrying mode. “But lots of the engagement rings I’m seeing lately are definitely way off my reality scale.”
Her reality scale is a 1.2-carat round brilliant set in white gold with four baguettes on each side. She and her husband painstakingly picked it out when they got engaged in 1995. She wouldn’t consider anything less, and many of her peers are sporting stones that are 2 carats or more, she reports.
“It used to be that a little chip would do it,” says Marion Fasel, co-author with Penny Proddow of “Diamonds: A Century of Spectacular Jewels” (Abrams), of the age-old engagement ring. “Size wasn’t really important; the gesture was. Now, at least a carat seems to be the magic number.”
Indeed, the carat-plus stone has become a bench mark of sorts in the ’90s, acknowledges Michael Christ, vice president of Tiffany & Co. in Chicago. Yet it’s not conspicuous consumption spurring this trend, says Fasel: “People aren’t buying jewelry like they did in the ’80s.
Instead, “people are thinking long-term and viewing it as an investment,” says Christ. “They’re looking for a diamond that they’ll be happy with for a long, long time, which in many cases means they want to get something that’s a little larger than what used to be standard issue for engagements.”
“Older brides have long tended to get larger stones,” says Mirra Prendergast, spokeswoman for Bulgari, but today this applies to all age groups. However, she adds, the Bulgari company, long known for its oversized jewels, recently added a line of engagement rings sporting stones under a carat. “The rings themselves are contemporary and bold with bezel-set stones, so a smaller diamond actually looks better in them,” Prendergast says.
But many customers are sticking to their guns about the carat, which even Prendergast admits is currently a “starting-off point” for many.
“I wanted a centerpiece,” says Kristen Montalbano, 24, a Chicago schoolteacher whose 1.2-carat marquise-cut stone from her fiance of six months, Julian Buchynski, looks the part on her slender finger. Yet hers is also a top-quality stone, she says; this was as important to her as the cut and size.
Montalbano thinks a larger stone of excellent quality not only looks better, it makes more sense for longevity.
“I’d never trade it in,” she says, referring to the custom many couples follow of trading up for a larger stone to mark an anniversary, “because it has so much sentimental value to me.”
For now, Montalbano’s ring is a solitaire. That is one aspect of the ring that she hopes to change by eventually “getting some things on the side”–a desire Fasel finds very au courant. “In addition to sizes over a carat, side stones of every sort . . . huge and chunky or dainty and small . . . are a huge trend right now,” she says.
Chicago options trader Todd Rich, 30, who has been married for six months, hit both trends when he bought an engagement ring for his wife, Lainie, 28, in 1996. The emerald-cut stone, just over 2 carats in size and set in platinum, is meant to last a lifetime. It’s flanked with two trilliants. He says: “It was an easy decision, because I knew exactly what she wanted, so I went for the best quality I could afford.”
Overall stone size may be going up, but “people aren’t sacrificing quality,” says Donald Levinson, president of Trabert & Hoeffer. Most of the engagement rings his shop sells range from 1 to 3 carats, and “people will definitely spend a little more or go a little lower in terms of total carats to ensure quality,” he says.
“The price of a stone “depends on carat, clarity and color,” says Christ, “while the nature of the diamond dictates its cut.” (Tiffany & Co. offers a free pamphlet, “How To Buy A Diamond,” to consumers.) However, in Levinson’s experience, most people find color and cut the important factors.
Montalbano, Buchynski and the Riches said they did some research before buying, and both couples ended up with pure white diamonds with D rankings (color grades range from D, the most colorless, to Z, for light yellow). Color was the quality both considered most critical in a stone.
“It’s a trade-off between clarity and color, and we went for color because you can’t tell clarity by just looking at a stone with the naked eye,” says Rich.
Levinson endorses this strategy. Color is vital, he says, because it can be perceived immediately by the naked eye, while clarity can be determined only under strong magnification.
“Clarity is a determinant of value, not the beauty of the diamond,” he says, adding that he finds most customers sacrifice clarity for color.
But cuts are as important as color, and, like size, are also driven by trend. For instance, the marquise cut was popular in the ’30s, the emerald in the ’50s. The oval cut seems to be the fashionable cut right now, says Fasel. Yet, she says, the round brilliant has been tops in every era: “It’s been the most popular cut ever since Tiffany invented the raised-prong engagement ring featuring this shape at the turn of the century.”
Popularity also drives price, says Levinson.
“The demand is greater for the round shape, which makes it more expensive,” he says. Plus, the actual cut itself can affect cost. For instance, “the emerald shape is less expensive, because there’s less salvage from the rough (the raw stone),” he says, “so you end up with a greater-weight diamond (carats measure weight, not the dimension of a stone).”
There are more tricks to picking the shape of a stone than meet the eye. As Levinson reveals, emerald cuts look smaller in size than rounds of equal carat size; oval, pear and marquise shapes are less expensive than rounds, but they look larger than those of equal carat size.
So what to buy? “It may be an investment, but it’s more an emotional investment than anything else,” says Christ. “Like art, you have to buy what you love.”
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Resources: Weddings ’98 (Magazine, Page 41)
Pg. 36: Round brilliant 3.36-carat diamond ring, $74,000, at Bulgari. Tiffany diamond necklace, $35,000, and diamond earrings, $20,075, both at Tiffany & Co. James Purcell white gazar sheath dress, $2,290, at Barneys New York.
Model: Liya, Elite, Chicago.
Pg. 37 (clockwise from upper left) Caleidos 1.2-carat diamond ring, $15,100, at Bulgari. Round brilliant 1.11-carat ring, $15,000–C.D. Peacock, Northbrook. Emerald-cut 2.39-carat diamond ring, $28,160, at Tiffany & Co. Oval 4-carat diamond ring designed by Susan Berman, $26,500, at Trabert & Hoeffer.
