lab grown diamonds tennis bracelet
Flushing, N.Y.: Tennis champion Chris Evert holds her U.S. Open tennis trophy over her head on September 10, 1978 and the USTA Tennis Stadium in Flushing, New York. (Photo by Dan Neville/Newsday RM via Getty Images)

The tennis bracelet was coined in 1978 at the US Open Tennis Championships when the world number one women’s player Chris Evert, stopped play to retrieve a diamond bracelet that had fallen off during the game. When quizzed about the moment following the match, she simply replied, “Oh, that was my tennis bracelet”.

While our love for the tennis bracelet has never wavered, it has since entered a new market for young Millennials and Gen Z fashionistas. Sometimes boasting up to 72 diamonds in a single bracelet, the cost of a diamond tennis bracelet is not exactly cheap. For the credit card, nor the planet. But when Marilyn Monroe said diamonds were a girl’s best friend we’re sure she was speaking about lab grown diamonds.

The industry’s buzziest new technology has arrived at the forefront of sustainable fashion with jewellers and experts turning to man made stones for luxury jewellery. Melissa Trafford-Jones, CEO of Deltora Diamonds is an internationally qualified diamond expert who aims to make diamonds more accessible. At the release of the brand’s new offering of diamond tennis bracelets, we ask her our burning questions on the new technology.

How are lab gown diamonds created?

As the name suggests, lab grown diamonds are created in a laboratory using two different forms of technology. According to Trafford-Jones, small stones known as ‘Melee’ – predominately used on stud and hoop earrings – are created using technique called High Pressure High Temperature (HPHT). For stones above 0.20 carats all the way up to 10 carats are made using the Chemical Vapour Deposition (CVD) method.

“To grow a diamond with the CVD method we take a diamond seed or slice from a mined stone initially and we place it in a compression chamber at 800 degrees,” Trafford-Jones explains. “We then rain down carbon and in a matter of months, not millions of years, a diamond grows atom by atom just as it would in the earth’s crust.”

Using the CVD method creates Type11A diamonds and are only found in 2 percent of the world’s natural diamonds.

Courtesy of Deltora Diamonds

Are there any noticeable differences between lab grown and natural diamonds?

The rarity and the value of a diamond is based upon four universal principals: cut, carat, colour and clarity. When it comes to the visual differences between man made diamonds and natural stones, Trafford-Jones says there is no difference. “They are chemically optically and physically the same,” she says.

What is the price difference of lab grown diamonds and natural diamonds?

When comparing a single carat between both diamonds, Trafford-Jones says that the extremely popular VS1 clarity diamond is valued at $10,500 AUD for a mined stone and $5,700 for lab grown.

Similarly, diamond expert Matthew Zamel of Le Maz Diamonds believes that while poorer quality diamonds will eventually suffer from the lab grown industry, “higher quality mined diamonds (investment grade whites and coloured diamonds) will become scarcer, more desirable to consumers and will continue to increase in value over the years.”

What are the benefits of lab grown diamonds?

According to TIME Magazinebetween five and 10 percent of natural diamonds are still illegally traded and recent years have unveiled the harsh truth of the mining industry, particularly in Africa, where natural stones have become known as blood diamonds as a result of the human suffering involved. Additionally, a report from Clean Origin discusses the ecological impacts of mined diamond including deforestation, the disruption of marine life and the quality of water.

“You know the origin, history and authenticity when buying a Deltora Diamond,” the expert adds. “Our cultured diamonds are created in high tech laboratories and hold unquestionable provenance with no impact on humanity.”

lab grown diamonds
Courtesy of Deltora Diamonds

How can you tell the difference in quality between different lab grown merchants?

As Trafford-Jones puts it, “a diamond is a diamond”. Lab grown diamonds still undergo the same grading from GIA or IGI, the international certifiers using the four C’s. “Both CVD and HPHT growth methods produce diamonds of different quality in relation to the 4C’s so you still see brown and yellow tinges but this is not a reflection on the merchant or growth method purely the diamond it was seeded from and the time in the reactor,” she says.

will mined diamonds ever cease?

“For now, we are seeing very high demand, strong prices and month on month doubled growth,” she recalls. “Consumers are demanding more sustainable products and practices and this is why lab grown diamonds sit in the sweet spot. Good for the environment, humanity and your pocket – luxury that doesn’t cost the earth. With more demand for lab diamonds we will see a drop in demand for mined stones, our prediction in the next 10 years the market will be halved.”

Zamel adds, “The world is yet to see the full impact on how the two markets will differentiate from each other, but only time will tell.”

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