Burn And Turn

Prices for laboratory-grown diamonds are falling, which isn't much of a surprise. They've never had the cachet or complicated romance of mined stones. But perhaps we're not thinking expansively enough about their best use.

- Words: Nick Scott Illustration: Lars Leetaru

SCIENTISTS DISCOVERED THE ability to create synthetic diamonds back in 1954, and we've been arguing about them ever since. Not only about whether a man-made gemstone could be considered the same as one produced by geologic phenomenon over the course of eons—the two are chemically identical, after all, and indistinguishable to the naked eye—but also about whether it should be. Laboratory-grown stones have always seemed to solve for certain ethical and environmental conundrums within the diamond industry, but as human beings, we also like our rarities, well, rare. It’s a debate, in other words, over whether diamonds are still ‘forever’ if they’re also for everyone.

But the market has seemingly made up its mind, at least when it comes to adornment. Allied Market Research valued the synthetic-diamond industry at US$24 billion as recently as 2022, but last May, De Beers—a longtime proponent of man-made—announced that its laboratory-grown offshoot brand Lightbox would permanently reduce its prices from US$800 to US$500 per carat. Sandrine Conseiller, CEO of De Beers Brands, credits the adjustment to the “high volumes of supply coming online in China and India” and says the decision “reflects the broader trends that we’re seeing across the laboratory-grown-diamond sector”. Later that month, at the JCK Show trade event in Las Vegas, a separate announcement touted De Beers Group’s new five-year Origins strategy, intended to “grow value and revitalise desire for natural diamonds”. As part of that plan, the group’s Element Six subsidiary, which specialises in synthetic-diamond development, will cease all production meant for jewellery in order to focus entirely on industrial applications.