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Colored stones
The diamond market has been hit hard by the rise of synthetics and the ensuing decline in the value of natural diamonds. For two years now, many diamond dealers have pivoted to buying more colored gems, because their value has only increased. Color was everywhere at the Las Vegas shows and is arguably the biggest trend of 2026.
Thinking back 20 years in the industry, some may recall the tough sell that color once was. De Beers advertising dollars had trained retailers and consumers to want diamonds. Now, however, the tide is turning despite the still-healthy ad budget at the Natural Diamond Council (NDC), and designers are embracing the rainbow.
At Couture, Vanessa Fernandez had some over-the-top colored-gem designs, as did Colette Jewelry’s new Anis collection – “a tribute to color in all its forms,” as founder Colette Steckel explains on her Instagram feed. Her rainbow of fancy-shaped colored stones in antique patinas and blackened gold will rock a rock collector’s world. At Luxury, Izi Creations showed exceptional unheated natural-color sapphires in pastel hues, selling many of those styles on day one. And Samuel Sylvio Designs in the AGTA pavilion at JCK had the brand’s signature Paraiba tourmalines, as well as a wide assortment of juicy pink sapphires.
Western-inspired looks
Cowboy life is going mainstream in America, and we have Taylor Sheridan to thank. The producer’s gritty cowboy TV series, including Yellowstone and Landman, deliver addictively edgy storylines about ranch life in the western states, and viewers can’t get enough. The Hollywood Reporter calls his productions “massive commercial juggernauts” that “regularly dominate streaming charts and occasionally break cable television viewership records.” Everyone is hooked, including jewelry designers, who are now turning out Americana-inspired treasures.
Jewelry brand Harwell Godfrey showed Texas ties at Couture, and Lika Behar Collection unveiled Texas state silhouettes and cowboy hats at Luxury. Montana sapphires are dominating the engagement-ring landscape with their teal and bicolor blue-and-yellow hues, not to mention a durability that ranks just below diamonds. Many a gem dealer at JCK Las Vegas’s American Gem Trade Association (AGTA) pavilion was flipping them like hotcakes.
In JCK’s Design Collective section, Wolfgang Vaatz served up western-inspired jewels in silver and gold, carved with the natural landscapes that the artist loves to hike. Unsurprisingly, he often sets Montana material into his pieces. Meanwhile, as part of the Design Collective’s Out of the Jewel Box (OJB) Experience, fine jeweler Gold and Smoke slung literal gunshot designs: flattened bullets cast in silver, gold and platinum with gems. These pieces may speak most directly to Sheridan fans, who have surely lost count of how many shell casings his characters have fired.
Opaque gems
Colored gemstones were the talk of the trade shows, and if you’re an industry insider, you know just how pricy high-end faceted gems have gotten. This scenario has paved the way for new designs featuring sometimes less-appreciated, opaque stones like turquoise and onyx. At Couture, Tabayer’s new Oera Still Stone collection featured custom-cut lapis lazuli, chrysoprase, blue chalcedony and red jasper in sculptural silhouettes. At the same show was Arunashi, which featured turquoise, agate, black jade, and other gems that married beautifully with the brand’s matte-finish gold styles.
At Luxury, Yael Designs had generous cuts of turquoise, white opals and mother-of-pearl mixed in with copper-bearing tourmaline and fire opals, which are among owner and designer Yehouda Saketkhou’s favorite gems. In the NouvelleBox section, Fern Freeman brought many of her onyx pieces, which provide a wide and edgy canvas for the designer to pair with her 1970s-inspired, oversize yellow-gold jewels and healthy dustings of diamonds. Opaque gems are less costly to acquire because they’re more abundant in nature, but their beauty can be every bit as memorable as their faceted companions.
Whimsy
No one’s complaining about this 2025 holdover; everyone loves a laugh and a little levity, especially with ongoing wars and high gas prices. Whimsical jewelry designs at the shows included Couture exhibitor Francesca Villa’s On the Road collection of gold, enamel and gemstone trucks, several blazing with bejeweled flames. Her double-sided postcard pendants feature the trucks on one side and engraved cursive notes on the other. Another Couture designer was Violette Joaillerie, offering lighthearted carved looks such as naturally striped tourmaline fish, gemstone hearts with gold phrases like “Just Relax,” and happy faces in citrine with gold smiles and eyes.
In the NouvelleBox section of the Luxury show, Maura Green showed carved charms including mother-of-pearl mushrooms and stars, abalone shell jellyfish, ice cream cones, unicorn heads, and sardine cans. In the same section was Tacit Fine Jewelry by designer Michelle Fantaci, who originally debuted under her own name years ago. This line’s look? Bubble letters and other seemingly inflated charms in gold and coated silver, mimicking the colorful metallic material of helium balloons. It’s a super-fun offering and a nod to the 1980s, with pretzel rings, lip motifs, initials, and other designs that urge us not to take life too seriously.
Brown diamonds
Brown diamonds are finally getting the love and respect they lacked when they were first introduced to the jewelry industry in the 1990s. Fine jeweler Le Vian laid the groundwork for this embrace in the early 2000s, spending millions promoting its Chocolate diamonds, and now De Beers has picked up the torch with its own marketing efforts. The mining giant’s “Desert diamonds” campaign spotlights “natural diamonds from the earth in warm whites, sunlit champagnes, deep ambers, and smokey whiskeys,” according to its promotions.
Designers got the message, and De Beers is collaborating with artists like Reema Chopra of Khepri Jewels, who exhibited at Luxury, to set these stones into their designs. Chopra’s line is an ideal fit, as fancy-color diamonds are her focal points. She told Rapaport in mid-June that she’d been seeing a large percentage of her engagement-ring customers asking for off-color stones in recent months. Why? “They want to buy natural diamonds, but they want some character attached to the stone that separates it from the colorless white we are used to with lab-grown diamonds,” she explained.
More tastemakers like Amáli Jewelry and Zahn-Z Fine Jewelry showed brown diamonds in their works at Couture, every gem loaded with the mystery and decadence that only a darker diamond can deliver.
Main image: Gold collar necklace with diamonds and Brazilian emeralds. (Moritz Glik)
