Diamonds For Dummies

If you keep up to date with fashion-related news (you probably do, you’re reading this!) you’ve likely heard that Louis Vuitton purchased the world’s largest (uncut) diamond back in January. I personally heard the news and instantly forgot about it; I simply wasn’t knowledgeable enough in the subject to care. I was interested in their haute couture, not their haute joaillerie. It recently dawned on me though, that big fashion labels have been pushing into the jewelry business in ways that have more of an effect on the industry than LV’s 1,758-carat purchase. Brands like Fendi, who debuted their own jewelry collection last summer, and Dior, who recently enlisted Yoon Ahn of Ambush fame to modernize their men’s jewelry, have the name recognition and industry presence to appeal to first-time diamond owners, while older, more established jewelry houses find much more success appealing to collectors. In this way, the jewelry market is becoming more like the fashion market, where awareness is generated by social media campaigns and celebrity endorsements.

So anyway, with all these new fashion brands diving into the jewelry market, I studied up on diamond terminology to give myself - and hopefully you - a clearer understanding of precious stones. I tried really hard not to make this sound like a chapter from a textbook. Here we go :) :)

Understanding the quality of a diamond requires an understanding of the 4 C’s: Carat, Color, Cut, and Clarity.

Carat:

It’s a term that doesn’t mean size as much as it means weight.

Five carats is one gram. Pretty straightforward. Because it’s a weight measurement, though, stones with a similar carat can appear to be different sizes due to density, so keep that in mind. Now for some examples.

Here’s a 1.5 carat diamond on a gross ass hand.

Here’s a big fat 10 carat one.

Color:

The vast majority of natural diamonds range from being essentially colorless to being tinged with a gross looking yellow (caused by the presence of nitrogen in the earth and blah blah blah). Jewelers grade them on a scale that goes from D to Z, (I don’t know why it doesn’t start at A. D for diamond? idk.) with D being the clearest and Z being the cloudiest.

The clearer side of the spectrum: “white” diamonds are considered anything from D to J.

The frozen piss side diamonds at the very end of the scale probably won’t be sold as jewelry.

There’s a bit more to diamond color than just this spectrum, however. Every diamond has a certain level of fluorescence, glow under a UV light.

As you can see in this picture, the fluorescent color of a diamond can be pretty much any color in the rainbow.

You also might be aware of diamonds that have a different colored tint, like pink or blue. Different colors can form naturally, but a lot of these are made in a lab for (relatively) cheap.

Cut:

There’s a whole bunch of stuff that goes into this, so I’m cutting a lot of the fat out. The best diamond cuts show off an equal amount of light reflectiveness and transparence. Even with knowledge of the terminology, it can be hard to tell a “good” cut from a “bad one”. I’m gonna show you an ideal specimen and then some substandard ones, so you can see the difference.

This would be considered a pretty awesome cut. The “light” and “dark” areas are equal to each other.

Here’s an example of a bad cut. Look at how thick the middle part (the “girdle”) is. It makes the diamond look small relative to its carat weight.

Another crappy one. Besides the obvious flaws in the cut that can be seen on the left, the pavilion (bottom part) of the diamond is too acute of an angle, which gives it that dark star pattern in the center.

Clarity:

Last, but not least, actually the most important category if you ask me, is clarity. What’s the point of having a big, well-cut diamond if it isn’t clear? Clarity is graded on a scale similar to color.

Here they are from best to worst:

At the tip-top are Flawless diamonds. Only about 1% of cut diamonds are flawless. It really isn’t realistic to think that you’re gonna own one of these, sorry buddy. The same can be said of Internally Flawless diamonds, even if they aren’t as rare. It takes magnification of 10x to see anything wrong inside of these, and they look flawless on the outside(like the name says).

VVS diamonds are the ones you hear rappers brag about. Maybe it sounds dumb to brag about diamonds that aren’t flawless, but it’s literally impossible to bust down a watch with only flawless diamonds. Plus it’d be almost pointless because to the naked eye these still look clear af. Gucci Mane’s watch should come to mind. Sheesh! You could say VS quality is Very Similar to VVS ;) Seriously though, there's no difference: you buy VVS for bragging rights.

“Slightly Included” is the level where the flaws in a diamond become apparent. But they’re pretty affordable compared to the rest. The ncluded grades are either used as industrial diamonds or sold to schmucks online. Keep in mind that the photos I’m showing you in this section are photomicrographs, which highlight the internal flaws in a way normal pictures won’t. Sellers online will 100% use that to their advantage. Please, please don’t buy diamond rings on eBay for $30.

That’s it for my little rundown. Most of what’s included here also applies to other gems as well. I wish I had thought of the idea for this article months ago, so I could tie it into Uncut Gems or something. I digress. Bringing it back around to my initial topic, Louis Vuitton’s uncut stone purchase was actually pretty risky. Even though the actual rock is huge, there’s no way of telling exactly how much inside it is high-quality gem material. If you weren’t aware, people don’t just pull diamonds out of the ground and polish them off like it’s Minecraft or something. Just because the rough diamond is big, you shouldn’t expect the stones that come from it to be as well, although it’s a possibility. According to LV’s spokesperson, this gamble is their first step towards becoming “one of the top five players” in jewelry, and I can see it happening no matter what’s in the uncut rock. Like I said before, they have too much clout to fail - at this point, it’s up to the old guard of jewelry to try and stay ahead.