Gender-neutral clothing is now mainstream but jewelry remains, to this day, pretty steeped in tradition.
Particularly on the fine and luxury end, specific styles of everything from pendants, link chains, and engagement rings to diamond studs are almost exclusively associated with a given gender.
This is, in a modern world, starting to change — as many smaller jewelry designers started toying with gender-fluid pieces, legacy big players have also started to get onboard.
Most recently, De Beers launched a gender-neutral collection called De Beers RVL. Owned 85% by the Anglo American (AGPPF) mining company and 15% by the government of Botswana, what is currently the world's biggest diamond producer has become synonymous with both luxury and tradition.
It has been around since 1888 and, in 1947, popularized what now feels like an inalienable association of diamond and engagement rings with the tagline "a diamond is forever."
A Collection Of Gender-Neutral Diamonds
The De Beers RVL collection contains a total of seven pieces. All are made with 18k white gold and diamond pieces, while three also feature black titanium and 18k rose gold.
Each is designed to work with any gender. According to De Beers, the idea was to look both subtly classic and trendy. It follows similar collections launched by rivals like Van Cleef & Arpels as well as French diamond mainstay Boucheron.
"The beauty of this collection is that there is no prescription about who should wear these pieces or how they should be styled; it is entirely up to the wearer," De Beers CEO Céline Assimon said in a statement. "The designs feature a secret code, but they also reflect striations visible in rocks, which reveal the story of the earth in which our diamonds were formed naturally."
One of the white gold pieces include an octagonal pendant that resembles a tag with six rows of diamonds for $5,900 as well as a black cord bracelet with a similar diamond-lined tag for $2,900.
De Beers
The black titanium pieces include a pendant, bracelet, and ring and cost significantly less than the diamond pieces — a black titanium pendant in similar style goes for $2,300 instead of $5,900.
For unity, each piece also has a small 'D' and 'B' monogrammed into its side.
Jewelry Trends After The Pandemic
Gender-neutral jewelry is currently in the midst of a surge in demand and popularity — a study by jewelry company Taylor & Hart reported a 228% rise in gender-free jewelry online searches between 2020 and 2021.
Traditionally not part of an engagement, male engagement rings have also been seeing significant spikes in both Google searches and purchases. The United States and India are seeing the most global demand — the 594,000 Google (GOOGL) searches done in the spring of 2021 in the latter is 69% more than the previous year.
Of course, gender-fluid and genderless jewelry is a niche part of a market already limited to a select few due to its high prices.
But aside from helping these legacy brands show that they can keep up with current trends, such collections can also shift the boundary in many buyers' perceptions of what constitutes "male" or "female" jewelry — and, as a result, slowly increase demand.
"There has been such a shift in the past 18 months," Edwina Hilton, a jewelry and watches buyer at Net-A-Porter, told Porter Magazine. "Brands are designing more and more pieces with both men and women in mind, and tweaking designs to appeal to both by increasing the size range or offering something a little bit chunkier.'
