Diamond Engagement Rings Specialist

It looks like the holidays make a man romantic going by the way the sales of both wedding rings and engagement rings shoot up during that time. Maybe at other times, a man is too preoccupied with work and when it’s holiday time, he can relax and turn his mind to other things – things like popping the question or deciding on a wedding date.
Jewellers all over the world see a surge of rings during the holiday season and even if, like an engagement, a wedding is usually planned in advance, a wedding date will, very often, be chosen during the holidays so it makes it easier for everyone to plan and attend. When it comes to an engagement ring, a man will probably walk into a store during a holiday and pop the question during a holiday too. And he will very often ask the store people for advice about the ring and the usual choice is the classic solitaire or vintage style diamond engagement rings. That goes for wedding rings as well. Even if a wedding is planned in advance, the couple will walk in for their wedding ring sets during the holidays. A store in the US has 40% of its sales of wedding ring sets during the holidays.
There have been a number of celebrity engagements and weddings during the Christmas and New Year break and it’s happened all over the world. Guess that just goes to show that the holiday spirit affects the rich and famous too. There was Marvin Humes and Rochelle Wiseman, Matthew McConaughey and Camila Alves, Britney Spears and Jason Trawick, Aretha Franklin and Willie Wilkerson, Michael Jordan and Yvette Prieto, Steven Tyler and Erin Brady and John Legend and Chrissy Teigen.

A few years ago, one would never have thought that people would buy diamond rings online. Most people needed to see, feel, touch, try on and then buy. However, there seems to be a marked change in recent times about the way people buy things – and this seems to have rubbed off on diamonds too. More diamonds are being sold now online and people don’t mind sitting in the comfort of their home and choosing which diamond they want.

For one thing, many more people around the world can afford diamonds now and even if they cannot buy a diamond that weighs and looks like the celebs’ diamond engagement rings do, they know that they can get a diamond that is within their budget. Not just that, they can sit back and have it designed online as well. Suddenly, buying diamonds have just become so much easier.

Recently, an online diamond jeweller launched a site in Turkey, little knowing whether or not the venture would be a success. Their diamond jewellery was only available online and they were very surprised at the number of e-shoppers their site attracted. The success of their site, they felt, was the fact that they had a wide range of diamond jewellery and a lot of it was affordable. They even had a very small diamond solitaire so people could have the satisfaction of being able to afford a classic diamond engagement ring. The huge demand for this ring made their site go down for a while! The great thing was that they got orders from remote villages too. Suddenly, they had made diamonds not just affordable but accessible to so many. Their customers range from students to many in the middle income and even the high income groups.

According to a jeweller, the tracking of recent jewellery sales has revealed that what are trending really well are rose gold and diamonds that are chocolate or canary coloured. Suddenly, there seems to be a very strong and rising interest in diamond rings that are different – from the colour of the metal used to the colour of the diamonds. Of course, what remains constant is the fact that people still want gold and they still want diamonds when it comes to diamonds rings. However, they want a diamond ring that is different and they are willing to pay more – maybe even a lot more – for it.

Why rose gold? Are platinum and white gold losing their sheen or is it just a fashion statement to have a different colour metal for a ring? Whatever it is, rose gold seems to be the flavour of the season together with diamonds that are brown or yellow – or to give them their fancy names – chocolate or canary diamonds. Diamond engagement rings with these combinations seem to be really popular and the women seem to love the unique and different look, while still feeling good that they are wearing diamonds – after all, in a woman’s mind, they are forever. The brown diamonds dazzle with a rich colour and the yellow ones sparkle with brilliance. It isn’t as thought people only choose rose gold as a setting as some prefer white gold but the trending seems to show more and more rose gold choices than before. This seems to extend to other jewellery like earrings, necklaces and wedding bands too.

The kind of diamonds that were the most popular are the round ones and the princess cut diamonds. The designs also seem to be getting more intricate and artistic. It looks like people are spending a lot of time deciding on what kind of jewellery they want. Is the shifting trend just a passing one or will it be around for a while? In the fickle changing world of fashion, one never knows. What one can say, however is that gold and diamonds – in whatever hue – are going to be around for a long, long time.

A study has thrown up some amazing insights. There are four counties in the country where men spend over £2000 on engagement rings. In fact, the average amount spent in one county was £2535 on one ring. This average was computed by using the sales over one whole year and trying to see where most of the spending was coming from. The study clearly threw up four counties where men went all out to spend a lot on the engagement ring they chose to propose to the women in their lives.
The four counties are West Glamorgan, Glasgow, West Lothian and Angus. If one were to look at an average, most British men spent over £1500 for an engagement ring. This augurs well for the diamond ring industry and obviously, diamonds are still the most popular gemstones for an engagement ring. It also shows that no matter what financial problems people might have, when it comes to an engagement ring, as far as possible, there will be no scrimping and saving.
The metal that is most popular is yellow gold and one out of two engagement rings seems to be made of this. Coming up next was platinum followed by yellow metal. There are certain counties that are still traditional in their tastes and will only look at yellow gold. However, the rest of the country seems to be more modern in their taste and they seem to prefer the white look to the yellow. London seemed to have a platinum preference. What also emerged is that more and more people are buying their jewellery online finding it a lot more convenient and efficient.

Or a wedding ring, or any ring for that matter. With the price of gold having shot up so much, more and more people are thinking of recycling the rings that they have in their possession – wedding rings, engagement rings or diamond rings they may have inherited. Of course, some people prefer to just sell the gold and buy new gold or exchange what they have for another ring of the same value. However, the trend today is seeing more and more people taking what they have and having them made into new jewellery for themselves.
The thing is, gold is never, ever thrown away – unless of course it was buried with royalty like the Egyptians or lost – at sea, in rivers, in soil. Otherwise, all the gold mined is passed down and recycled from generation to generation. So imagine – you could well be wearing gold that was mined in the time of ancient civilisations. And yet, except for the few who could afford to keep buying more gold and keep the old jewellery till they became heirlooms, most people recycled and upgraded their jewellery by making them into more modern designs.
The great thing about recycling old jewellery is that you don’t feel the pinch of how high priced most precious metals and gems are. It also means that you get yourself a piece of jewellery that is contemporary and looks new. Very few people want to wear someone else’s engagement ring or wedding ring so this is a great way to wear something new and yet not pay the earth for it. This could even work if you don’t really like your engagement or wedding ring because they are old fashioned or they look worn out. With the same metal and gem stone, you can make a new improved piece of jewellery, feeling that you are still wearing the same thing in a new avatar.

A study says that over 50% of British people would like to leave their possessions to their family and there is a miniscule percentage that says that they would not want to leave what they own to their children. Among the things that they would like to mention in their wills would be their property, their money and of course, their engagement and wedding rings.
What most of them felt would be that an inheritance would be a great way for the younger generation to boost their income or savings. The main factor that emerged of course, was property and nearly 60% felt that this asset was what they most wanted to pass down to their children and grandchildren. Then of course, was money and they no doubt felt that they money they earned and saved was going to their family to make their lives better. Then came the wedding and engagement rings and they were specially mentioned in the wills because after all, many of them are worth a lot today. 4 out of 10 people who were interviewed said they would put down how the wedding rings and engagement rings were to be distributed.
And what of the ones who stood to inherit? There were a number of them who said that they would welcome it and there were those who relied on it to one day make their lives easier and more comfortable. In fact, many of them were rather far sighted, saying that if they inherited something, they would put it towards a retirement fund or savings that would help them to have a more comfortable later life.

There’s been a surge of wedding ring sales in Japan, especially in the earthquake affected areas. Not just wedding rings but engagement rings as well and this has been noticed more so in Sendai, the commercial area in Japan where the quakes and the tsunami hit the worst. There’s one store here where the sales have doubled when compared to the last year.
Most stores in this area have the same story to tell. So many of them had to close down after the disaster and rebuild to open to the public again. How thrilled they are to find that their sales have picked up so dramatically and it looks like they will cut their losses much sooner than they anticipated.
Why is this happening? People seem to feel that maybe this disaster made people reassess what their priorities were and try and see what was really important in their lives. There seems to be a shift in the highly materialistic Japanese society towards what they are fast coming to feel are the real things in life that matter – friends, family, love, caring. It also pushed people who were thinking about marriage to fast track their plans and actually do it, fully having been made aware that life is transient and they need to grab the present and make the best of it. Meanwhile, engagement ring and wedding ring manufacturers are ecstatic.

Is it all right to sport huge diamond rings to interviews? Well, maybe it all depends on what job you are interviewing for. If it were a job at a fashion house or an event management opening, maybe it would be all right. However, a corporate job that entails responsibility and hard work might be another matter altogether. So if you do not want points to be deducted from your interview report, maybe you should leave that huge diamond ring at home.
This may be even more of a problem when you had a huge engagement ring on your finger. This could also be detrimental to your chances of getting the job because there could be employers who see an imminent marriage as days off, interest in the job waning and the like. Why should a diamond ring, especially a huge engagement ring spark such a negative reaction? A woman who is engaged and about to get married could bring the same hard work and professionalism to the job as her fiancé could, couldn’t she? But many don’t see it that way and they judge women differently.
In fact, not just a job interview – when it came to raises too, there seemed to be the unwritten feeling that if a woman could afford a huge diamond ring, then she should not really be demanding a raise because she obviously did not need one. There was one interviewer who saw the diamond ring in a negative light because she worked with an African charitable institution that was against blood diamonds and that influenced the way she regarded women who wore diamond rings. So maybe it would be a good thing to be safe and leave that diamond ring at home when it comes to an important interview.

There seems to be an interest in sapphires for engagement rings after the royal wedding but the new wave today is not the usual blue sapphires but pink sapphires. Most people tend to think that sapphires can only be blue – many slightly different shades of blue, but blue all the same. However, there are some wonderful variations in colour when it comes to sapphires – and pink is a shade that seems to be the newest fashion wave when it comes to engagement rings.
How exactly do pink sapphires get their colour? When the amount of chromium in the gemstone increases, you get a pink colour which is light or dark depending on the quantity of chromium present. Today, with technology being what it is, there is a process called lattice diffusion which can give a sapphire its pink colour. Sapphires are available in many more colours than blue – you can get yellow, orange and brown sapphires too. However, when a sapphire is red, it is called a ruby and it becomes a different gem altogether.
Sapphires are mined in Sri Lanka, Australia, Burma, Madagascar, India, China, Tanzania and Kenya among other places. Does this mean that sapphires, especially the pink ones are going to give diamonds a run for their money when it comes to engagement rings? Not likely because most engagement rings will have the sapphire set with diamonds surrounding or flanking them. Diamonds still are a girl’s best friend and while other gem stones might come into their own for a while, diamonds rule the day in the long run.

He’s coming back to IJL – International Jewellery London – after being away for five years and he’s going to be showcasing his new collection of men’s wedding rings as well as a collection of accessories and pearl cocktail rings. This collection will include the Celestial pendant, the Satellite cocktail ring and the Triumph ring which are some of his best selling items. The pearl cocktail rings feature the Mohawk and the Triumph ring is set with brilliants while the Satellite ring is set with square stones.

He plans to exhibit his pieces in specially made illusion cabinets and his engagement ring collection will have many more exhibits with rings that have 25pt and 33 pt brilliants. The Platinum Trail at the event will feature his bridal tri-set. His presence here seems to indicate a strengthening of ties with all his old, existing and potential partnerships. Andrew Geoghegan is known for his designer engagement rings all over the UK and even globally. His designs are very often striking and unusual and they are designed meticulously with an eye for detail.

He mainly uses platinum and 18 carat gold and his brand, called AG has won several awards in the UK to make him one of the best known designers and he has over fifty retailers who stock his designs in the UK and in Ireland. His designs are elegant and timeless and at the same time it oozes luxury and perfection.

It’s going to be a really exciting event and the International Jewellery London event is going to be held between the 4th and the 7th of September at Earl’s Court. It is, after all, one of the most talked-about events in the UK and this year promises to showcase a number of new entrants, new designs and new trends. Many of the UK’s best retailers and buyers are sure to be seen at this event.

The event also has seen the launch of new brands and new collections – what better time or place to launch something new than at an event where the cream of jewellery buyers congregates? The jewellery stalls all have one thing in common – they will all feature designs and jewellery of the highest finish and quality. Of course, British designers will be the main group here but the event has also showcased designers from Europe and the USA. The seminar programme has already been released and can be viewed at their website. There’s a catwalk that will run through the whole length of the venue and there will be two shows a day. This, they hope, will bring the designs that are showcased to life. There are a number of new design areas scheduled for the event this year as well.

This year, you have the Henrich & Denzil stand featuring Stuart Moore, the famous American modern jewellery designer, celebrating his fifty years in the business by launching a range of engagement rings and wedding rings. For the first time, Daisy Knights will be a part of the show and she will be launching a new line called ‘Wise’. Kate Moss and Rihanna are fans of her brand. The other British designers who will be featured are Kleshna, William Cheshire, Shaun Leane and Malcolm Morris. There’s going to be a special section of silver jewellery as well and it will feature some new designers with some very path-breaking collections including the trendy Festina watches. There will also be a special section on pearls and designer pearl jewellery.