The man-made stone have never had the cachet or complicated romance of mined stones. But perhaps we’re not thinking expansively enough about their best use.
Scientists discovered the ability to create synthetic diamonds back in 1954, and we’ve been arguing about them ever since. Not only about whether a man-made gemstone could be considered the same as one produced by geologic phenomenon over the course of eons—the two are chemically identical, after all, and indistinguishable to the naked eye—but also about whether it should be.
Lab-grown stones have always seemed to solve for certain ethical and environmental conundrums within the diamond industry, but as human beings, we also like our rarities, well, rare. It’s a debate, in other words, over whether diamonds are still “forever” if they’re also for everyone.
But the market has seemingly made up its mind, at least when it comes to adornment. Allied Market Research valued the synthetic-diamond industry at $24 billion as recently as 2022, but in May, De Beers—a longtime proponent of man-made—announced that its lab-grown offshoot brand Lightbox would permanently reduce its prices from $800 to $500 per carat.
Sandrine Conseiller, CEO of De Beers Brands, credits the adjustment to the “high volumes of supply coming online in China and India” and says the decision “reflects the broader trends that we’re seeing across the lab-grown-diamond sector.”
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