A Diamond By Any Other Name
For most of the world, a diamond conjures up images of sex appeal. A bleach-blonde bombshell in her iconic pink gown, salaciously singing about a girl’s best friend, or the imaginings of Ian
Fleming’s infamous spy accompanied by a female companion, notorious for her mysterious jewel dealings. However glamorous the story behind the stone may be, the process of acquiring
one of the toughest materials known to man is not so sparkly. From poverty to political unrest, diamonds had a sordid path on their way to becoming fine jewelry. With advancements in
technology, what takes mother nature billions of years to create can now be duplicated in a laboratory in a matter of days. ‘Cultured,’ a word popularized by the luxury pearl brand,
Mikimoto, has been approved by the FTC for the use of sales in the rapidly growing lab-created bling industry, a hard-won battle. Trading the Kimberley process for manmade ice, the diamond
mining industry is reinventing itself in a marketing move styled, ‘conflict-free diamonds.’
Once a luxury reserved only for European royals and American industrialists, a diamond was a hard display of wealth due to its rarity and the extreme expense of extraction, the affluent
association needed no advertising, it showed for itself. The turn of the 20th century saw De Beers’ business structure become a monopoly. A merger with the Cullinan Mine, today known
as Premier Mine, put a “Comstock load” of stones in their vault. De Beers knew they had to restrict their supply in order to save their demand and create desire. “A Diamond is Forever” is
perhaps the most successful advertising campaign of all time. Instructing men to spend “two and a half times” their salary on an engagement ring and altering the reputation of a rock that
once symbolized wealth to a symbol of a woman’s worth. The friction with this trend, however, is the change in ideals. We now have widely available information on mining conditions,
specifically its impact on human welfare and the environment. As the most established leader in the diamond industry, De Beers is closely following the changing market around
laboratory-created stones, trading in their once timeless “forever” slogan for the industry conscious, “Real is rare, rare is a diamond.”
Changing mindsets around women and their values have altered as well. No longer does a girl need to wait for a man and his money to display affection. With bravado the modern career gal
is icing herself, known in the industry as ‘self-purchasing.’ Cutting its natural competitor by a 30 to 40 percent price decrease, the cultured diamond market increased its accessibility to a wider
range of consumers. Matched by only the highest grade diamonds in colour, cut, clarity, complete with their own GIA grade stamp of approval, the appeal of the ‘conflict-free diamond’
has allured even De Beers. They’ve joined the lab-created diamond industry under the subsidiary, Lightbox. Under the loupe, the change is clear, studies have shown that consumers
want a larger stone with maximum brilliance, free from the inclusions of unstable mining conditions, a promise symbolized in the word, “cultured.”
