Ice. Glass. Rocks. The words fairly slither out of one's mouth,
wrapping themselves tightly around the nearest billfold. Constricting
the wallet's ability to protest,
the hissing sounds are soon transformed into the thing: a
girl's best friend.
According to the Diamond Information Center in New York,
U.S. diamond sales in 1998 were around $20 billion. It marked
the seventh straight year the U.S.
diamond industry saw a rise in total sales. Though the
numbers for 1999 haven't yet been tallied, it looks very
likely that last year's total sales will top 1998 figures.
I don't know about forever, all you IPO impresarios, but
diamonds are absolutely for now. Click away from CNBC for
even two minutes and here's what you're likely to see: A
TV spot for bluenile.com
(which I've seen more frequently than family this year)
depicts two trim, pretty, young women out to dinner at a
place where the waitresses wear nicer ties than NBA coaches.
Pretty girl #1 has just been engaged, so she extends her
hand across the table, the better for pretty girl #2 to
inspect her rock. It then becomes clear that not only has
#2 never seen anything so stunningly beautiful as #1's ring,
it's also been too long since her last tetanus shot. #2
becomes embarrassingly, publicly rigid, unable to let go
of #1's hand or shift her gaze. Diners whisper. The wait
staff stares. #1 tries to tug her hand away. Awkwardness
yawns. #2, meanwhile, wears an expression of embalmed wonderment,
as if she's recalling her first Bat Mitzvah check or considering
the career of Michael Douglas.
Personally--and fellas, I don't think I'm alone here--I
don't get it.
It's just a shrunken, dressed-up rear-view mirror, right?
A tiny prism from the science museum gift shop, nailed to
platinum, perhaps? I know a diamond is rare, exotic and
expensive, but so is Manute Bol and look what happened to
him. A diamond is so...so '80s in its gaudiness, isn't it?
Or '50s? "Oh no!," the world answers, wagging its sparkling
finger in my face, "Oh, you pathetically naive little man."
If Madonna instructed us a decade and a half ago that we
were living in a material world, now it seems we are living
in an immaterial world: Regardless of your salary, a diamond
will be yours.
Sober, otherwise sensible women friends of mine get all
googly-eyed around rocks. Tight-fisted guys I know, the
ones who cringe when dropping $4 for a cocktail, cheerily
part with five or six thousand bucks for a shaved pebble
the size of Donald Trump's modesty. Lil'
Kim, that fantastically nasty-mouthed, impossibly curvy
rapper chick, confessed recently to wanting only one thing
for birthdays, Christmases, her troubles, etc.: ice.
In an attempt to understand the diamond mystique, I went
first to a logical source: my new wife. We were engaged
last year, and for one panic-pricking moment it looked as
if we might have to confront the jewelry industry to find
her ring. It seemed, after all, like the thing to do. But
then an antique, deco diamond ring, long in her mother's
family, turned up, and the potentially protracted, definitely
pricey endeavor was averted.
The other day I asked my wife about her glass: "So, uh,
what do you like about it?"
"Well, it's glittery. Look at it," she said, flapping her
hand around like she was trying to put out a fire on her
knuckles. The ring sparkled, zapping spooked lasers all
over the room. Then she tapped on it with a finger nail.
"And it's incredibly hard. I mean diamonds can cut glass,
other rocks. It's tough."
Simple as it might sound, I've since discovered that those
two qualities are a large part of the diamond's winning
formula. Folks dig the fact that a diamond is effortlessly
beautiful and as durable as a middle linebacker.
Portlander Maria Lahodny, the 34-year-old vice president
at Gerber Advertising, was engaged in early December. "The
allure
of what the ring symbolizes is important to me," she explains.
"That it is of the earth and is really rock solid. It's
something that will be around; long after we're dead and
gone it will be here. For me, it's by far the most beautiful,
significant piece of jewelry I've ever owned. And you do
feel a little like a princess."
Kathryn Peters, engaged in October, would probably slug
you in the nose if you called her a princess. The onetime
copy writer, currently remodeling her home, says she didn't
want a huge rock getting in the way of a busy hiking and
jogging routine. "I've always been as big a tomboy as you
can be," Peters, 26, admits.
When she and her fiancé, Giuseppe Lipari, decided
to go traditional but not too traditional, he designed
a diamond-and-sapphire engagement ring that they both describe
as looking "medieval." The 25-year-old Lipari took the plans
to a local jeweler to be hammered out.
"I don't know how we decided that a diamond would be the
center stone," Peters says. "The diamond came out of the
idea that it makes it look like an engagement ring. Then
the farther you get into it, suddenly you have to have the
diamond. But for me it's not about the diamond or the size
of the diamond, it's about what it symbolizes."
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Willamette Week | originally
published January 5,
1999
|
