How to cheer up Britain

Recession. Cuts. Unemployment. World Cup #fail. A deranged gunman on the loose. Sometimes it seems like there’s nothing but bad news out there.

Well at least the sun’s shining – for now.

But we need something else to cheer us up and we’ve hit upon an idea:

Let’s have a royal wedding.

It’s been a while since we had a good one (the Peter Phillips + Canadian joint venture in 2008 didn’t really hit the spot) and the gloss has long since faded from those failed 1980s mergers between Charles & Diana and Andrew & Fergie.

So let’s have the one that the 21st Century has been waiting for: William & Kate.

They’ve teased us for long enough: we’ve had too many false reports, and we’ve even had pictures of (fake) Kate wearing a wedding dress.

Besides, what exactly is the Royal Family for if it can’t arrange a glitzy royal wedding once in a generation?

Our new coalition government is pulling out all the stops to try to turn the economy around, but perhaps the Prime Minister & Chancellor should have a word with the boy William and ask him to do the nation a favour and tie the knot on a date which is positive for the economic cycle, i.e. as soon as bloody possible, please.

When the city of Stockholm hosted the wedding of Swedish Crown Princess Victoria last month there were reports that for every $1 spent on the wedding, $100 would be generated for the economy.

Now that’s the sort of fiscal stimulus that we need: let’s spend £100m on a royal wedding and generate £10 billion for our economy. I reckon that would add around 0.6% to the UK’s GDP of £1.75 trillion.

There, that’s fixed it.

Now I’m sure that those Swedes put on a good show for their Big Day, but when it comes to the consumption of mountains of tatty Royal Wedding merchandise such as the indispensable Will & Kate Tea Towel and the Will & Kate Keyring, I’m confident that Britain still leads the world.

Plus of course there’s the boost from tourism as people flock to the streets of London from around the country and around the world in even greater numbers than usual, all prepared to pay for overpriced hotel rooms and about £5 for a small bottle of tepid water as they wait around for hours along the procession route through the capital waving their union flags.

And what marvellous sponsorship opportunities!

This will be the first really big royal wedding in the modern era, so like the World Cup or the Olympics, there must be a wacky mascot and an official logo for the event.

The Will & Kate logo will be expensively licensed out to Official Partners, including the Official Credit Card, the Official Cola, the Official Beer, and the Official Airline of the Royal Wedding.

A Royal Wedding will boost the media businesses too: the TV companies will cover it like they’ll cover the 2012 Olympics (which means that the two events can’t clash, so that’s another great reason not to wait until 2012), and a billion trees will be pulped to publish glossy special souvenir supplements with every newspaper and magazine.

There will be street parties with beer & bunting, and sales of 3D-TVs will get a boost, and copycat engagements & weddings will generate business for lots of people like us…

And lastly and perhaps most importantly, the Royal Wedding will add to the nation’s ‘General Well-Being’ (remember that?). It’ll put a smile on our face and make us feel like the sunlit uplands are finally within our grasp.

And the dwindling number of republicans will grumble and moan and write angry letters to the Guardian.

And then, when all is done, we’ll have an almighty hangover.

Original post here.

www.diamondthrills.co.uk

Diamonds and Zimbabwe

I was jogging on a treadmill at the gym last week when I spotted images of diamonds on Sky News on one of the club TVs.

Now diamonds don’t make it onto the mainstream news channels too often so I hurriedly tuned in so that I could watch and listen to the report.

The subject was the meeting of something called the ‘Kimberley Process’, taking place in Israel last week, and more specifically the diamond industry response to what’s been happening in Zimbabwe.

A bit of background: like most of its neighbours, Zimbabwe is a diamond-producing country, but not a major one in global terms.

When industry website IdexOnline published its overview of the 2009 diamond ‘pipeline’ earlier this year it estimated that Zimbabwe produced around 2.5 million carats of diamonds at a value of perhaps $80 million – that’s just less than 1% of their estimate of the total value of global production last year of £8.46 billion.

Now Zimbabwe might be producing rather more than that – it’s hard to tell (of which more in a moment).

But then again last year was a lean year for diamond production because major producers such as De Beers cut back massively, wisely deciding that if they were going to struggle to sell the diamonds then they would be better off leaving them in the ground.

According to Idex, global production in 2008 was $14.8 billion, in which case this ‘theoretical’ Zimbabwe production of $80m would be around 0.5% of the global total.

Zimbabwe’s production is so hard to quantify because of the failings of both the Zimbabwe regime and the Kimberley Process.

The Kimberley Process was set up by the diamond industry and relevant governments and NGOs to stem the flow of conflict diamonds – the sort of thing that was depicted in the movie Blood Diamond starring Leonardo DiCaprio and set in Sierra Leone in the late 1990s when that country was ravaged by civil war.

The Kimberley Process has scored some notable successes over the last decade but it has failed in respect of Zimbabwe, and that’s partly because what’s been going on there is not a civil war or a ‘conflict’ in the same sense that conflicts took place in Zaire (now DR Congo), Angola, and Sierra Leone.

But the absence of an overt conflict in Zimbabwe does not mean that all is well there in the diamond trade – far from it.

You can find the gory details elsewhere, but there have been credible reports of killings by security forces, forced labour, child labour, and the imprisonment of a human rights activist.

And it almost goes without saying that the brutal Mugabe regime is mixed up in all this, with allegations that people around Mugabe are profiting handsomely from the nation’s lucrative diamond resources.

The response from the Kimberley Process regulators was to ban exports of diamonds from Zimbabwe, and they helpfully circulated images of uncut diamonds from Zimbabwe (below) to help traders recognise them.

Rough diamonds from Marange in Zimbabwe

But of course diamonds are all too easy to smuggle, and nobody believes that banned Zimbabwe diamonds are not leaking out into the legitimate diamond trade where unscrupulous traders (and there too many of those…) will mix these illicit diamonds into parcels of diamonds from legitimate sources.

To make things worse, the Zimbabwe Government brazenly declared this week that it planned to sell its considerable diamond stockpiles anyway, regardless of the Kimberley Process ban.

Meanwhile the regulators meeting in Israel failed to agree on a way forward, so the meeting ended in deadlock and the issue was kicked into the long grass until their next meeting to be held in St Petersburg.

Why are we telling you all this?

Well you probably won’t hear about this sort of thing on other consumer-facing diamond & jewellery websites, and if you walk into a jewellery boutique they’re unlikely to volunteer this information to you; if you do ask them about Zimbabwe and diamonds they’ll most likely look at you blankly because they don’t know enough to comment or to offer you convincing reassurance.

The diamond industry doesn’t like to shine a light on its own shortcomings (who does?), and of course the risk for the industry is that consumers recoil from diamonds altogether and choose to spend their precious cash on something else.

We know this, but we believe that people want and deserve more and more transparency about the products that they buy (or rent!), so we’re prepared to learn as much as we can about what’s going on in places like Zimbabwe, and to write about it so that you have accurate information and can make an informed decision.

The diamond industry is embarrassed by Zimbabwe and would like to solve the problem, but politics and bureaucracy and conflicting interests and corruption prevent that from happening, and the Kimberley Process seems impotent and unable to come up with the answers.

In a way, they’re damned if they do and damned if they don’t, and we don’t envy them their task.

If exports from Zimbabwe are resumed then the revenues from diamond sales will flow into the hands of the brutal Mugabe regime and the industry will be seen to approve of – or at least tolerate – the conditions in which the diamonds are being mined.

But under the export ban diamonds are leaking out of the country anyway, revenues are ending up in many of the same corrupt hands, and conditions on the ground don’t improve.

Meanwhile, the violence and lawlessness of the Marange diamond fields ensure that Zimbabwe continues to be an affront to democracy and a stain on both the diamond industry and the Kimberley Process.

It doesn’t matter that it’s only 0.5% or 1% of world diamond production. Diamonds are emotive and women buy or wear diamond jewellery because of how it makes them feel.

Zimbabwe is an important test for the Kimberley Process and last week it failed that test.

We just thought you should know.

original post here

www.diamondthrills.co.uk

Will this improve the iPhone 4g’s reception?

Oh dear. These novelty diamond things just keep on coming.

It’s been barely a week since the launch of the iPhone 4g, but that hasn’t deterred Stuart Hughes from smearing one with diamonds.

Classy

This little gem features around 6.5 carats of VVS clarity / F colour diamonds, with the Apple logo on the back fashioned out of platinum and studded with diamonds.

A limited edition of ‘just 50′ will be made, according to Hughes’ website, so hurry along now and snap one up for £12,995.

Quite what you do with your £13,000 iPhone 4g when it becomes obsolescent in 12-18 months time… well, we could make a few suggestions.

Oh, and in case you’re balancing on a knife edge of indecision about buying one of these beauties, it comes with a very special accessory: a wallet made from an Ostrich’s foot. At some point we’re going to start believing that this is satire dreamt up by The Daily Mash…

We can think of a few England footballers who deserve one of these – it’s about as classy as their performance at the World Cup.

Hat-tip to Gizmondo.

Original post here.

www.diamondthrills.co.uk

Diamonds off-the-shoulder and on the ball

The eyes of the world are on South Africa and one local jeweller has cashed in on the attention by coming up with a couple of novelty applications for diamonds.

We’ve blogged about this sort of thing before (diamond iPads, iPhones, cakes, and a diamond Wii), so here we’ll hold back on the comment and simply show you this week’s blinged-up everyday objects. Here they are:

Both of these shiny objects have been brought to the world by SA-based jeweller Shimansky.

For the record, the tattoo features 612 Shimansky Ideal Cut 0.5 carat diamonds, stuck to the model’s skin using a special water-based adhesive in an 8-hour application process, whilst the football is adorned by 6,620 white diamonds and 2,640 black diamonds – a total diamond weight of 3,500 carats.

Reports have valued the tattoo at £640,000 and the football at £1.8 million.

Original post here

www.diamondthrills.co.uk

Sex And The City and the big black diamond

Now I haven't seen the film (not really my thing: I'm a man...), but I've noticed quite a lot of buzz about a black diamond that enjoys a prominent cameo role in Sex And The City 2.

** Spoiler Alert! If you really don't want to know how the film ends then don't read on! **

Still With me? Good.

In the final scene, Big gives Carrie a diamond ring and tells her, "Because you're not like anybody else".

The diamond ring is somewhat unusual in that it features a 5 carat black diamond (pictured, above).

The ring was created by designer Itay Malkin, and in addition to that eye-popping 5 carat black diamond, it features 80 round pavé-set white diamonds weighing a total of 0.35 carats. The diamonds are set in 18 karat white gold.

Black diamonds are unusual but they are becoming more fashionable (and this placement in SATC2 will of course add to their popularity).

The blackness in natural black diamonds is caused by millions of microscopic inclusions spread throughout the stone.

Some natural black diamonds are referred to as carbonado diamonds (a Portuguese word - they were found in Brazil and the Central African Republic), and there was a theory doing the rounds a couple of years ago that these diamonds came from outer space, falling to Earth in a meteor 2.3 billion years ago.

Another theory has it that black diamonds were formed during shock metamorphism - the result of an explosive meteoric impact on the Earth's surface.

More prosaically, black diamonds can be created in a laboratory (although these technically should not be referred to as diamonds) or as a result of special treatments that can be applied to more common non-black diamonds.

In any event, thanks to the inevitable commercial spin-off from the SATC2 movie, fans can buy one of a limited edition of 'identical' rings for $10,000 from designer Itay Malkin or the film's costume designer Patricia Field.

Given that a 5 carat diamond ring would normally cost a lot more than $10,000 (we just checked a leading online supplier, and the minimum price for a 5 carat diamond was over $50,000), we can't help but wonder just how natural and 'diamond-y' these $10,000 rings really are...

We say: Caveat emptor! But then Hollywood is all about illusion, fakery & pretence, right?

Original post here.

www.diamondthrills.co.uk

Hestia tiara features in State Opening of Parliament

We don’t normally pay much attention to the State Opening of Parliament, but yesterday’s ceremonials were a bit special to us, and not just because we have a shiny new coalition government in place in the UK for the first time in anyone’s memory.

Some months ago we had an enquiry about our stunning Hestia tiara (below), but not for a wedding: our customer was interested in hiring the tiara for the State Opening of Parliament, on a date yet to be set (this was before the UK election was called).

And so it came to pass: our tiara was perched atop an aristocratic head during the Queen’s Speech in the House of Lords in Parliament here in London, and we’re told that it got lots of appreciative comments from all sides.

Of course it also gave us an excuse to watch ‘The Gracious Speech’ (as it’s known) and we couldn’t help but notice that our precious tiara was jostling for attention, and, well yes perhaps we must concede that it was being upstaged somewhat by the crown that the Queen was wearing.

So we did what all loyal UK subjects should do in such circumstances: we didn’t really listen to what Her Majesty was saying about the important legislative plans for Her Government, we started doing a bit of research into what she was wearing.

And here’s what we discovered: for the State Opening of Parliament the Queen wears the Imperial State Crown (below).

The crown is adorned with over 3000 gems, mostly diamonds, but also rubies, sapphires, emeralds and pearls.

Others will highlight the ‘Black Prince Ruby’, the ‘Stuart Sapphire’, or the ‘St. Edward’s Sapphire’.

But we reckon that the main event is the Cullinan II diamond which sits on the front of the crown and weighs in at 317.4 carats.

The Cullinan II diamond is sometimes called the Lesser Star of Africa. It’s the second biggest polished diamond cut from the world’s largest gem quality rough diamond ever discovered, the 3,106.75 carat Cullinan Diamond from the Premier Mine (later called the Cullinan Mine) in South Africa, unearthed in 1905.

Which is all very impressive of course, but the Imperial State Crown makes regular appearances in Parliament so it’s not much of a story in its own right.

So please forgive us if we dwell on the debut appearance of our Hestia tiara in such a historical setting.

We got quite a thrill to see our relatively humble jewels rubbing shoulders with our shiny new Prime Minister, Her Majesty the Queen, the Imperial State Crown, and the Cullinan II diamond — absolute royalty in the world of jewels, and pretty good company for Diamondthrills to be keeping!

If you would like to experience the thrill of being adorned by our magnificent Hestia tiara at your wedding or special event, then please get in touch and we’ll make it available to you — provided that it’s not already booked out for any more state occasions, of course.

Original post here.

www.diamondthrills.co.uk

Would you tell people you've hired the diamonds you're wearing?

Well, would you? This question occasionally comes up as we chat to our customers, and we hear a range of responses.

Just last week we asked a customer about this because his wife wore a diamond necklace with matching earrings (pictured, right) to a family wedding.

Now the retail cost of this jewellery would be around £12,500 – probably rather more from a fancy Bond Street boutique – and our customer told us that their fellow wedding guests admired the diamond jewellery and asked about it.

So did they tell those admirers that they didn’t own the jewellery, but that they had hired it for the evening?

No: they said that the jewellery was a ‘gift’ and left it at that.

Well we want people to enjoy wearing our diamonds on special occasions such as weddings, so whether they come clean about the fact that the jewellery is not theirs is – to us – quite immaterial.

For us it’s about the experience of the moment – the evening, the wedding, the party – rather than the commitment of ownership or the symbolism of a gift of love.

They say that ‘A diamond is forever’ – well, of course, it will last forever, but you’ll only get to wear that diamond for a tiny fraction of eternity, and frankly, an evening or a weekend is not so very different to a human lifetime when set against the geological, eternal, forever-ness of a diamond.

Anyway, it got us thinking…

When we first had the idea for Diamondthrills a couple of years ago, we did worry that renting diamond jewellery would be a bit infra dig [from the Latin infra dignitatem, literally - 'beneath (one's) dignity'].

And that therefore people might not want to do it, or if they did, to not talk about it, in much the same way that a chap might go to a smart black tie function but would be reluctant to admit that he had hired the dinner jacket he’s wearing.

But as we did more research and talked to more women, and especially as the gathering storm of the recession set in, it became clear that for many people the idea of hiring jewellery would be seen as smart and savvy, a clever way to accessorise with stunning diamond jewellery for a special occasion, but without the high cost and commitment of ownership.

So, far from clamming up and not wanting to talk about it, we found that lots of women would actually boast about how clever they were being by hiring diamond jewellery!

Well, that’s music to our ears, of course.

And for those – like our customer last week – who don’t want to broadcast the fact that those diamonds they’re wearing are on loan, well that’s fine too. Your secret is safe with us.

What about you? Would you tell people that the sparkling diamonds you’re wearing have been rented for the occasion?

Original post here.

www.diamondthrills.co.uk