The diamond industry was in a tough spot. The country had survived a brief recession, but the economy was slow to recover. The new generation was different: less traditional, more political, less interested in expensive material items. Women didn’t worry so much about getting engaged, and when they did get married, they wanted their jewels to be unique. “I don’t want a ring that looks like my mother’s, and I don’t want a ring that looks like my grandmother’s,” one bride-to-be told the Los Angeles Times for an article called “Wedding Jewelry: One-of-a-kind Look Is In.”
Sound familiar? It was 1972, and the rise of anti-establishment hippies was scaring the crap out of diamond sellers. Then, De Beers launched a new advertising campaign, a spin on the classic “A Diamond Is Forever,” with an updated tagline: “A Diamond Is for Now.” These print ads explicitly targeted independent working women, speaking to a female customer who might even (gasp!) use her own money to buy a diamond for herself. “You didn’t get where you are by following in somebody else’s footsteps,” one ad said, over an image of a woman with her feet kicked up on her desk, wearing a glittering ankle bracelet and silver strappy sandals.
This woman — the female self-purchaser — has been in the diamond industry’s sights ever since. Forty-five years later, she’s still a critical target, as the latest Diamond Insight Report reveals. She’s so important because she helps sellers of diamonds make up for a major vulnerability: the stone’s historical, nearly inextricable ties to romance, love and marriage. When marriage and its associated rituals go out of style, as they occasionally do, the diamond risks losing its commercial appeal.
Unfortunately, the industry only seems to remember the female self-purchaser during cycles when diamond sales are already low. But wealthy women have been buying themselves diamonds since before the turn of the 20th century. Arabella Huntington — widow of railroad baron Collis Huntington — didn’t wait for a new husband to buy her jewels. She never remarried, but she regularly dropped tens of thousands of dollars at places like Tiffany & Co. and Cartier.
After “A Diamond Is for Now,” diamond sales recovered, and De Beers didn’t introduce another campaign for the female self-purchaser until 30 years later, in 2003, after the conflict-diamond crisis. It was marketing a new product called the Right Hand Ring, a diamond cocktail ring for strong, independent women. When it didn’t catch on, the ads disappeared.
Today, however, the industry has a real opportunity to speak to the female consumer again — and this time, to keep the conversation going. Sales of non-bridal jewelry to women have grown by a third over the last 10 years, according to the Diamond Insight Report. Deborah Marquardt, chief marketing officer of the Diamond Producers Association (DPA), says her organization’s findings “align closely with De Beers…more women are purchasing jewelry for themselves due to a variety of reasons — higher income, increased purchase for non-traditional occasions, and the fact that couples are getting married a few years later than previous generations.”
Retailers are seeing the same thing. Elizabeth Doyle, who owns the antique, vintage and estate jewelry store Doyle & Doyle in downtown Manhattan, confirms there’s been an uptick in women shopping for themselves. “We see women buying to fill out their collections or jewelry wardrobes,” she says. “The pieces they are shopping for are quite varied, but what they have in common is that they are pieces that fill a void.”
Ruta Fox, creator of the diamond and gold Ah Ring for single women (the “Ah” stands for “available and happy”), says that whether the intended buyer is male or female, the story the product tells is still crucial. “The ring reverberated because it had an emotional component,” she says, looking back on its runaway success in 2001, when TV comedy Sex and the City was popular. “It made women feel good about being single.”
Female shoppers, it seems, are not so different from their male counterparts. They want jewels that speak to them, and they want to feel good about what they’re buying.
Rachelle Bergstein is the author of Brilliance and Fire: A Biography of Diamonds (HarperCollins, 2016).
Image: The Ah Ring from DivineDiamonds.comArticle from the Rapaport Magazine - October 2017. To subscribe click here.