History will remember 2020 as being a bit of an odd year, putting it mildly. Traditionally, years that are very different to others tend to spark off something of a rebellion in fashions of clothing, jewelry and more, and engagement rings are not immune to these. This year, couples who are getting engaged tend to be moving away from the traditional round brilliant solitaire, and are instead embracing the different, the quirky and the intensely personal.
Going Bespoke While there have always been people who like to design their own engagement rings, the trend is much more marked this year. People are incorporating their own personal likes and dislikes, homages to their place of meeting or the time and place of their engagement, transforming their engagement ring into a miniature personalized time capsule. For example, a couple who met at a music festival could incorporate musical notations etched into the band, a couple whose love of Harry Potter drew them together could design the ring to show the deathly hallows, and so on. Halo rings are growing in popularity too, with a central stone surrounded by a separate band of smaller stones, as though in orbit around the solitaire rather than clustering close, as is traditional.
Against these bespoke designs, the cut of the diamond is important, with a traditional round brilliant cut – the traditional diamond shape – not always suiting the design of the ring. Which leads nicely to the next point:
Unusual Cuts
The shape of diamonds for engagement rings have, since the early 1900s, been fairly static, with the round brilliant cut being the most popular. It is a beautiful and demanding cut with over fifty facets all reflecting and refracting the light to enhance the sparkle of the stone. But this year, the number of rebels – those who eschew the traditional engagement ring – is higher than ever, and many express this by choosing engagement rings that have an unusual shaped diamond.
The most popular of these is the emerald cut. A spare rectangular cut, an emerald cut is ideal for flat wide stones, and the horizontal cuts give it a quiet aesthetic elegant that is visually pleasing. Similar to the emerald cut is the Ascher cut, which has the same rectangular shape, but with softer planes and curves, so it seems to be plumper – approaching the round plumpness of a cushion cut diamond.
The trillion cut is a triangular shaped stone, which can have sharply defined edges, or curve from point to point. Whichever variation you prefer, the trillion is a beautiful cut creating a lovely scatter of rainbow points whenever you move your hand, and yet avoiding garishness or ostentation. A deep cut trillion offers almost as much brilliance as the round brilliant while offering that distinctive and unusual triangular shape.
No matter which engagement ring style you choose, the shape of the diamond is key to achieving the right look that you want. For more information about cuts and shapes, you can visit Pricescope diamond forum, an impartial and independent guide for all things diamond.
*This was a collaborative post but the opinions stated are always my own.
