Flashy engagement rings have lengthy been par for the course amongst betrothed A-listers, however these days it seems like they’ve been getting larger. Much larger.
Last month, the Portuguese soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo proposed to his longtime girlfriend Georgina Rodríguez with an oval diamond giant sufficient to impede half her knuckle. With an estimated weight of 25 to 35 carats, the gem swamped Rodríguez’s finger and sparked criticism on-line for its inordinate dimension.
And it isn’t the solely supersized stone to draw headlines this 12 months. While formally engaged since 2023, Lauren Sanchez Bezos gave the world its first actual glimpse of her ring at a marriage ceremony get together in Venice in June. Whisked throughout the Venetian canals on a non-public water taxi, Sanchez Bezos’ uncommon pink diamond (price an estimated $3 million to $5 million, and someplace in the proximity of 30 carats) didn’t a lot catch the gentle however grabbed it out of the sky with a hefty gravitational pull.
Now, Taylor Swift has joined the fray with her mine-cut antique diamond engagement ring — although the singer’s rock doubtless weighs a extra modest seven to 10 carats, in accordance to jewellery specialists. The ring was reportedly designed by Swift’s fiancé Travis Kelce in collaboration with jeweler Kindred Lubeck, founding father of the New York-based model Artifex Fine.
“This isn’t somebody who just went into the shop and said ‘I want the biggest diamond,’” stated Garret Weldon, president of the Irish Antique Dealers Association and proprietor of the Dublin-based jeweler, Weldon.
Weldon described the elongated cushion-cut diamond worn by Swift as “the Holy Grail in this business” as a result of it is “one of the rarest stones you can get.” The gem, he noticed, doubtless dates again to the 18th or early nineteenth century. “At that time, there was very little mechanization of the mining process, so you had to wait for nature to weather the stone out of a rock face” — or for a landslide, or different pure means, to convey the diamond to the floor, he stated, making it “rare, unusual and special.”
Yet regardless of the nuanced fantastic thing about the piece, for many it is the dimension that strikes first. In the US, the common engagement ring is round 1 carat, although it could be as excessive as 1.7 carats, in accordance marriage ceremony planning service The Knot. Swift’s ring, in the meantime, covers at the very least half of the backside third of her finger, and is round double the estimated weight of Zendaya’s — albeit nonetheless big — engagement ring and up to ten instances that of Charli XCX’s.
But in contrast to Rodríguez’s and Sanchez Bezos’ gems, it is arguably understated. “This is a very wearable size,” stated Weldon. “It’s not wider than her finger; it’s not touching the knuckle at the top of her finger.”
While supersized gems have lengthy appealed to celebrities (bear in mind the whopping 33.19-carat diamond ring Richard Burton romantically gifted to his spouse Elizabeth Taylor) they seem to have develop into much more pervasive.
“Big stones have always conveyed status, romance, excess,” stated Charlie Boyd, the digital jewellery and watches editor at Harper Bazaar Arabia. “I think it’s more that where we’re seeing those stones has really changed. Before, it was exclusively monarchs who could afford really, really large gems. Now it’s very different. We have a completely different economic landscape. We have Silicon Valley tycoons and tech moguls and celebrities.”
For Boyd, these big diamonds are additionally extra seen as we speak, thanks to the creation of social media platforms like Instagram, the place they are often posted for the world to ogle. The rise of the “ring shot,” too, has created warped expectations of dimension, Boyd added. “Our societal rituals around proposals have really changed because of social media. It’s extremely rare now that a couple gets engaged and there isn’t a ‘ring shot,’ often posted across multiple platforms.”
But extra than simply maintaining appearances, technological developments have made carving larger stones far simpler than a century in the past, jewelers are now not solely chopping tough diamonds by hand. “Now, if a jeweler or a diamantaire obtains a large rough, you are then assessing that stone digitally,” Boyd stated. “You can cut the stone to give the biggest yield.”
As a lot as vogue or visible artwork, ring design is a reflection of society and the period it hails from. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, for occasion, rings had been “very art nouveau styled,” stated Weldon.
So how will future generations interpret supersized engagement rings similar to these worn by Rodríguez and Sanchez Bezos? Dominated by a central stone, these rings should not about artistry or flare, Weldon argued. “There are only so many ways you can safely and elegantly display a very large stone in a ring context,” he stated. “You run out of road.”
Boyd calls the development for giant stones a “flash-first aesthetic” — one which often includes a wispy steel band, sometimes set in platinum. “Minimal metal means the more you see your diamonds, the more light goes into the stone,” making it “look even bigger,” she stated.
Diamond engagement rings solely began changing into mainstream in the US in the 1940s, regardless of the seminal 1947 De Beers advert proclaiming that “diamonds are forever.” Today, nonetheless, proposing with a ring is virtually embedded in the establishment of marriage — and a custom that is hardly ever skipped. But if the development for XXL diamonds continues the engagement ring could remodel from one thing loved publicly to a piece appreciated in non-public.
An engagement ring could also be “a talisman to that particular moment” that you really want to have “with you always,” as Weldon put it, however the inconvenience — and in some circumstances, hazard — of additional giant jewels could as an alternative see them saved away in a secure place, fairly than worn day by day. “Is she getting in and out of the car? Is she trying to find something at the bottom of her purse? And is this ring so large that it’s actually going to obstruct and hinder that?” stated Weldon.
Boyd notes that “diamond shrinkage syndrome” — the place a diamond seems smaller over time due to rising familiarity with their stone — might even see seemingly impractical rings enter every day use. This phenomenon may additionally clarify why supersized engagement rings have develop into more and more normalized, Boyd added. “The more we wear them, the more we become accustomed to them,” she stated. “Suddenly, they don’t feel that big anymore.”