Are you sparkling sustainably?
Sarah Royce-greensill reports from the Cannes Film Festival, where the lab-grown gems were going green
At the start of the Cannes Film Festival, Julianne Moore unveiled a necklace she codesigned for Chopard: a Titanic-worthy affair, centred around a chunk of rare, electric blue paraiba tourmaline. As well as its impressive size – 34 carats – and luminous glow, what makes this stone special is that it is the first sustainably sourced paraiba tourmaline, mined in Mozambique and set among responsibly sourced diamonds in fair-mined white gold.
Unlike diamonds, which are governed by the Kimberley Process to eliminate conflict diamonds from the supply chain, there’s no ethical certification for coloured gemstones.
Chopard, along with Livia Firth’s sustainability consultancy Eco-age, aims to change this. Each mine is assessed against Eco-age’s Green Carpet Challenge “Principles of Sustainable Excellence”, which cover transparency, traceability and environmental conservation alongside the basics of safety, fair pay and no child labour.
This ethical outlook could account for the growing presence of lab-grown gemstones, which are slowly making their way out of the realms of sciencefiction fantasy on to red carpets and into real jewellery boxes.
“Celebrities prefer to wear diamonds, not crystals, on the red carpet,” says Nadja Swarovski. “Swarovski does so much in the area of sustainability, so we thought why not embrace created diamonds?”
Last year the brand launched its first collection – worn by Penelope Cruz at Cannes – featuring lab-grown diamonds and emeralds, which, to the naked eye, are indistinguishable from mined stones.
“They’re chemically and physically identical to natural diamonds,” Swarovski says. “They’re created in a sustainable way, with a minimal carbon footprint.”
It’s not an entirely new practice; the first lab-grown diamond was created in the Fifties by General Electric. By subjecting a diamond “seed” to intense heat and pressure, it mimicked the conditions that lead to their creation over millions of years underground to produce a rough crystal in weeks or months. Technological advances mean it’s now possible to create gem-quality stones, including D-colour, flawless diamonds: the rarest, most prized (and therefore most expensive) type.
The rough crystals are cut and polished in the same way as natural stones, graded by the GIA and sold at 30 to 50 per cent less than their mined counterparts, with certificates to prove origin. The industry received a huge marketing boost in 2015 when Leonardo Dicaprio invested an undisclosed sum in Diamond Foundry, one of the largest producers of man-made diamonds.
These advances have not gone unnoticed by the traditional diamond industry. In 2016, the Diamond Producers Association (which comprises the world’s seven biggest mining companies, including De Beers) launched a pointed advertising campaign with the tag-line “Real is Rare, Real is a Diamond”.
“Some big players don’t want created diamonds to catch on,” says Laura Chavez, founder of new fine jewellery brand Lark & Berry, which uses exclusively lab-created diamonds and gemstones. When looking for manufacturing suppliers, she encountered workshops who refused to work with man-made stones. “They call them ‘synthetic diamonds’ but they’re not – they’re real.”
Chavez’s desire to work with created stones stemmed not only from her concern for the environment but from her desire to make fine diamond jewellery accessible to all. “I buy expensive shoes and I wanted nice jewellery, but everything was either poor quality or out of my budget,” she says. “I wanted to give people the option to buy fine jewellery with real diamonds that they can wear every day. Diamonds needn’t be scary.”
Along with creative director Katie Rowland, Chavez has developed a range of “demi-fine” 14ct-gold, stackable pieces with diamond pavé starting at £300, and a higher-end range in 18ct gold, diamonds and coloured gemstones. Prices reach up to £78,000 for the 13.5ct Knot necklace worn by model Martha Hunt in Cannes. Chavez hopes to appeal to the new generation of women who buy jewellery for themselves and are clued up on where gems come from.
“It’s a generational thing,” agrees Nadja Swarovski. “I don’t know how willing my mother’s generation would be to embrace a created diamond, but the younger generation is so informed, and they care about sustainability. They want to be able to say, ‘I know where my diamond comes from, and wearing it makes me feel good.’”