NRPLUS MEMBER ARTICLE R om-com fanatics will remember well the 80-carat diamond necklace Kate Hudson wears in the last scenes of How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days. In the movie, playboy and advertising specialist Benjamin Barry must prove to his boss that he’s the right guy to lead a diamond campaign. His boss isn’t convinced that beer-guzzling Barry knows enough about romance to sell diamonds. To prove otherwise, Barry promises he can get Andie Anderson (played by Hudson) to fall in love with him in ten days.
It works. In the final scenes, at an event for the diamond company, Barry’s boss doesn’t even ask Anderson if she’s in love. He looks at the necklace hung around her neck and observes: “No diamond sparkles like a woman in love.”
De Beers Jewelers first sold the world on diamonds in the 1940s with its standout campaign, “A Diamond Is Forever.” Diamonds have always been romantic. The word comes from the Greek adamas, meaning invincible. The rock itself resembles purity and incorruptibility and has for centuries been laid atop engagement rings and wedding bands to signify love’s greatest commitments.
After the sexual revolution, diamond interests revamped their advertising methods. Companies launched a variety of campaigns to try to make diamonds (and, by default, women) less dependent on men. The industry first tried to persuade women to buy diamonds for men but had more luck convincing women to buy diamonds for themselves. By the 2010s, however, most advertisements reverted to the tried-and-true promotion of romance.
Yet there’s a new push, according to the Atlantic, to rebrand diamonds as platonic. It’s a sad reminder that fewer people are falling in love, and America has no idea how to remedy the romance problem.
Its platonic rebrand is different from the diamond industry’s previous socially motivated campaigns. Diamond companies are trying to figure out a profitable way to combat the nationwide decline in romantic relationships. With the rise in lab-grown diamonds, and the industry’s post-Covid oversupply problem, retail jewelry isn’t as expensive as it was before. Women who have a “gift-giving” love language, as one Jared advertisement says, might see diamond jewelry as a great way to show appreciation for non-romantic relationships.
Signet Jewelers, which owns Zales, Jared, Kay Jewelers, and more retail brands, says that engagement-ring sales haven’t yet grown back to where they were before the pandemic. Covid lockdowns prevented relationships, or stopped people from meeting altogether. Signet reported an almost 10 percent drop in sales this year. The marriage rate has also declined in the U.S. over the last 50 years, by almost 60 percent.
To make matters worse, the culture war against romance is ramping up. Disney stripped Prince Charming of his role in the latest Snow White film: Even though princes are crucial to stories about princesses in love, Snow White is “not going to be saved by the prince, and she’s not going to be dreaming about true love,” actress Rachel Zegler said.
Making diamonds platonic, or amputating a prince from his princess, doesn’t address the real problem: Fewer people are falling in love. Love is a secondary, even tertiary, priority. Years spent building an independent life and career now come far before, and often at the expense of, searching for relationships. If culture continues to demote romantic relationships, people might have even less motivation to find love. Antisocial behavior fueled by Covid and technology plays a large role in the decline as well.
Younger people are less likely to get married — 40 percent of Gen Zs and Millennials think marriage is an outdated tradition — but 83 percent still admit they see themselves married someday. Yes, fewer people get married, but that doesn’t mean people don’t want romance.
Consumers haven’t changed their minds on love, at least not yet. Romance is one of the highest-earning book genres, Valentine’s Day is America’s fifth-largest spending event, rom-coms made a box-office resurgence after Covid, and pop star and romance aficionado Taylor Swift invigorated the entire economy with her Eras tour by singing, almost exclusively, about the desire to be loved.
There’s an innate demand for love. It’s lofty, and perhaps too romantic, to assume that diamond companies can convince people to fall more in love with the idea of love. But it’s not impossible. The industry successfully sold couples on the idea that a rock — no matter how small — is the ultimate symbol of commitment. There’s a reason that previous campaigns to deromanticize diamonds didn’t work. Let’s hope commitment still sells, and the “platonic” diamond fades fast.