CHICAGO — After 20 years of writing about love, heartbreak and everything in between, pop superstar Taylor Swift seems to be getting her fairytale ending with boyfriend Travis Kelce of the Kansas City Chiefs.
Swift and Kelce announced their engagement with a mid-day Instagram post on Tuesday, cheekily captioned, “Your English teacher and your gym teacher are getting married.” The announcement set social media ablaze with news alerts and heartfelt congratulatory messages.
The announcement included a carousel of five photos of the happy couple, including a close-up of Swift’s engagement ring — which some local jewelers are already expecting will become a source of inspiration for future brides.
When Jill Freeman, co-owner of Bryn Mawr Jewelry Company in Andersonville, saw the photo of Swift’s ring, one of her first thoughts was, “Well, I better start ordering some elongated cushions, because that’s gonna be the next hottest diamond trend,” she said.
It’s hard to know the ring’s exact specifications without confirmation on who the exact designer is — though some believe it was designed by Kindred Lubeck of Artifex Fine Jewelry.
The diamond appears to be an elongated cushion, and is likely a natural diamond versus a lab-grown, jewelers said. The stone itself is also thought to be a vintage mine-cut diamond due to its faceting, which is the flat surfaces cut onto the diamond that can determine its sparkle.
Vintage mine-cuts have “more chunkier facets, and just something different than you see with modern stones,” Freeman said.
Elongated stones have been a popular cut for the past couple of years, but they remain a somewhat unique or “fancy” stone due to the fact that they aren’t always readily available, said Bianca Norris, project manager at Adornment and Theory in Logan Square.
“It’s usually something that needs to be cut for you, or sourced for you,” Norris said. “But it’s not impossible [to get] by any means.”
The stone is also set in a north-south direction rather than east-west, said Meghan Lorenz of Cities in Dust, a Chicago-based contemporary jeweler.
“A lot of times when people are using those … elongated cushions, they play with the orientation,” she said. “I just think it looks great the way it was set.”
It’s difficult to speculate how many carats the stone is, since the photo shared doesn’t include a profile of the ring, but experts say it could be between 8-10 carats.
The ring also boasts a thicker gold band with delicate hand-engraving, giving it a vintage style in lieu of a more sleek and thin modern band.
“The piece is just amazing and really special, and it’s very ornate, which to me speaks to Taylor Swift’s personal style,” Lorenz said.
For the everyday Chicagoan who might be interested in a similar style, customers can play around with the type of diamond — lab-grown tends to be more affordable, for example — and size, Lorenz said.
“Usually with sourcing, where there’s a will, there’s a way,” she said. “So what you do is you just figure out the client’s budget and source within that. But there’s definitely inventory for beautiful stones that are similar and more affordable.”
Jewelers said they anticipate Swift’s ring will cause an uptick in people wanting a vintage-inspired ring or an elongated diamond.
The style has already been gaining popularity in recent years, but Lorenz predicts it’ll really take off now.
“I’m sure people are immediately pinning this and sending this to their partners,” she said. “This stone is going to have a real moment.”
After Selena Gomez announced her engagement to Benny Blanco late last year, Freeman said there was an uptick in requests for a marquise diamond like Gomez’s. Norris also said Hailey Bieber’s engagement ring from Justin Bieber led to requests for a large diamond paired with a minimal band.
Adornment and Theory recently released a new line of rings featuring hand-engraving, but they also do custom designed rings — without copying another designer’s exact product, Norris said.
Freeman also said Bryn Mawr Jewelry offers hand-engraving when designing a custom piece, and they also work in both natural and lab-grown diamonds.
“A lot of lab-grown [diamonds] are being made in antique cushion-cut stones anyways,” Freeman said. “Most people aren’t able to afford the natural one that Taylor has, obviously, so lab-grown is a great alternative.”
While Cities in Dust offers more contemporary designs, Lorenz also recommends local jewelers like Titan Jewelry, which works on “really intricate … detailed” pieces.
“My work is a lot more contemporary. I’m hoping that I get requests for stones that are … inspired by [Taylor’s]but we can potentially do something a little more contemporary that is my style,” Lorenz said.
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