Why rich Chinese, Lady Gaga, Anna Hu and other celebrities are choosing yellow diamonds
Piaget, Chanel, Chaumet, Chopard, David Morris, De Beers, Cartier and Chopard all featured precious yellows in their collections
Yellow diamonds are having their moment in the sun. Lady Gaga stole the show with the stunning 128ct fancy yellow Tiffany Diamond she wore to the Academy Awards this year, while Anna Hu set an auction world record – US$5.78 million – for her 100.02-carat fancy intense yellow diamond necklace at Sotheby’s Hong Kong last month. The haute joaillerie collections in Paris in July were overflowing with them.
Lady Gaga is only the third person to have worn Tiffany & Co.’s cushion-cut yellow diamond, which, at US$30 million, was the most expensive jewel ever worn to the Oscars. Discovered in South Africa in 1877, the diamond normally lives in a vitrine in Tiffany’s store on Fifth Avenue in New York. First worn in 1957, it was subsequently reset in a Jean Schlumberger-designed ribbon rosette necklace and worn by Audrey Hepburn for the publicity photos for the 1961 film Breakfast at Tiffany’s. The pendant-style design Lady Gaga wore was set in 2012, the yellow gemstone nestling in a basket of white gold with 120 carats of white diamonds to enhance the fire of the spectacular Tiffany Diamond.
The July Paris haute joaillerie collections glowed with sunny-coloured diamonds: Piaget, Chanel, Chaumet, Chopard, David Morris, De Beers, Cartier and Chopard all featured precious yellows in their collections. Unsurprisingly, the upbeat colour generates a mood of optimism, as it is often at the heart of a sun motif. For instance, Piaget’s lively Golden Hour necklace radiates with yellow and white diamonds, as does Chaumet’s Soleil Glorieux diadem and Cartier’s Yuma necklace.
“Yellow brings to mind the warm glow of the sun,” says Michelle Ong, of Carnet. “More importantly, it is symbolic in Chinese culture and art, from the way in which light falls on a bloom to the significance of yellow in imperial artistry such as the emperor’s robes. They all find a way into the pieces that I design.”
Ong’s Sunkissed floral brooch shimmers with yellow-to-brown diamonds. The yellow diamonds, she says, can accent a piece and bring a touch of light. “In Sunkissed, [they] add a lovely touch, and bring to mind a beautiful orchid bloom in the sunlight.”
The increasing popularity of yellow diamonds is related to jewellery’s 1970s-inspired gold fever, with the return of yellow gold. Chanel used yellow gold to add a warm glow to its white diamonds, as well as its yellow ones, in its Russian-inspired collection based on Coco Chanel’s brief love affair with the Grand Duke Dimitri Pavlovich, cousin of Tsar Nicholas II. The maison produced some regal yellow diamond rings and Roubachka necklaces.
De Beers, Graff and David Morris similarly highlight vibrant yellow diamonds in their collections. Sixty-two carats of fancy vivid yellow and white diamonds catch the sun’s rays in a bracelet by David Morris. The Electric Cichlid suite of glowing yellow and white diamonds in De Beers’ Portraits of Nature collection quickly caught customers’ attention and only the ring and pendant are left.
And recently in Hong Kong, Graff showed an exhibition of rare jewels that featured a blazing yellow diamond watch, rings and brooch with the 107.46-carat Graff Sunflower.