J.R.Dunn’s Jewelry Blog

Thank the good Lord that my family and I were fortunate enough (or smart enough) to hire a a great crew of fashion forward professional ladies about a decade ago! Every season they have managed to keep J.R.Dunn Jewelers on top of it’s game when it comes to fashion and jewelry trends. Some trends are red hot one minute and forgotten the next so you have to be quick, but fortunately this isn’t the case when it comes to bridal jewelry. Bridal jewelry trends have a much longer lifespan and change more gradually.

Back when I started in the business in 1996 we were selling lots of yellow gold and two tone engagement ring settings. Wider rings were very popular and so were invisibly set diamond mountings. We were selling those rings by the truckload and little did we know that those pretty little rings would have major maintenance issues down the road! We have traded out, replaced and fixed so many invisible set mountings I lost count!

The popularity of yellow gold, two tone and the invisible settings began to wane and and smaller styles in white gold and platinum began to take over by the late 90′s. There were so many different variations of these mountings it was crazy. Bar setting and channel settings for round and baguette diamond were hugely popular for the side stones. These times were the heyday for the ribbed shank on the Scott Kay platinum settings. Scott created such a hype with this styles that he was credited for the renaissance of platinum in fine jewelry. That was quite an achievement!

The next huge swing in bridal occurred a few year later with the advent of micropave and super thin rings. It became and still is all the rage. Vintage lacy looking ring styles, split shanks and crisscross shanks got red hot and the bar set look faded far far away. So what is bridal jewelry gonna look like in the future?

Bridal Jewelry Trends for 2008 and Beyond

The crew at J.R.Dunn feels that white metals are here to stay. The vintage feel will also remain popular because it goes so well with lace! Micropave still has legs but the trend will be shifting towards using larger stones and cleaner, less fussy ring designs that focus on the beauty of the main diamond. We have already experiencing this at the store level. Our clients are requesting bigger accent diamonds in a lot of our original engagement ring designs. The demand for engagement rings that have a matching wedding band that can be worn by itself will also continue to rise (who wants ring that has a crazy curve in it anyways?). It is about time the designers thought about this! Client will increasingly opt for better made rings, one of a kind designs and rings that are pretty from all angles. The statement less is more will begin once again apply to engagement rings and sorry guys we are not talking about the size of the center diamond!

We’d love to hear from you. Please write us and tell us what you would like to see in bridal jewelry styles going forward.

Thanks for reading,

Sean