When Did Engagement Rings Become Popular in the World and America?

When Did Engagement Rings Become Popular in the World and America?

There may be many factors as to how a marriage proposal take place – the surprise, the setting and of course the reply are all possibilities that change from person to person.

But they will almost always include one constant: it’s bound to feature a ring; a diamond ring specifically.

While people getting engaged or exchanging wedding bands is of course not a new concept (let's be honest, we can't see this one disappearing any time soon and did you know that it dates way back to Ancient Rome?) the dominance of diamonds in all this has occurred over more recent times.

How It All Started

Jewelry made from diamond has been popular since 13th century, in history the first ring was given by a king. These were set in crowns, necklaces and other jewelry but generally weren’t worn to serve as a statement of a person’s love and commitment.

Most likely, the Archduke Maximilian of Austria was offering her when she received a beautiful as well as delicate ring to be liked as the very first diamond engagement ring! The ring — gold set with diamonds in the shape of an M — started a trend that continued for a century, as even royals and other nobility would use these stones to show their fidelity.

Still, for much of the 20th century, diamond rings were relatively rare as a vehicle for marriage proposals. The tradition of engagement rings arrived in the U.S. circa the 1840s, but it wasn’t until the mid-1870s and a discovery of large diamond veins in South Africa that diamonds were more accessible, even to middle-class consumers.

1800s Era

In 1888, to curb supply and control prices in the market, South African miners formed the De Beers Consolidated Mines Ltd. (now De Beers) cartel to protect their investment and profits. De Beers managed every facet of the industry — right down to marketing — and it worked hard to convince the world that diamonds were rare, and a signifier of status.

But it would be another half century before people started to associate them with love and marriage. Prior to World War I, most brides received gemstones in their rings, although only 10 percent were diamonds.

The Great Depression in the 1930s led to a collapse in the diamond market. People, paradoxically enough, cut back on luxury and stuck to the basics — and as a result they broke an entire country’s heart (or to be more precise: It broke the hearts of those whose sense of well-being depends on borrowing from future growth).

Marriage rates dropped and the couples who did commit to each other opted for rings at a lower cost with smaller, low-quality diamonds.

De Beers Golden Era

With a surplus to unload, De Beers embarked on a propaganda campaign for diamonds. In 1938, they retained the New York ad agency N. W. Ayer to launch a long-term, coordinated effort to associate diamonds with marriage and commitment.

Using Hollywood celebrities who displayed their diamonds on and off the screen, the campaign was explicit not about selling a particular brand but about selling the idea that it should be diamonds, and only diamonds, which were the measure of a man’s love. The bigger and more expensive the rock, went one oft-repeated adage at the time, the more committed to his marriage a man was — and here was an analogy that would justify both bigger-bridge clubs’ higher charges as well as how astounding it would soon become.

One of the best ad slogans in all of history was coined by Ayer in 1948: “A Diamond Is Forever.” Suddenly, diamonds were not simply a requirement for marriage — an emblem of eternity — but they also appreciated in value over time since few tried to resell them. De Beers also established a price for love, determining that the standard one-month’s salary (by the 1980s it had been inflated to two) spent on something to last forever was what one should have paid.

And as the diamond jeans so became the measure of a man, and the idea that he should want to get married, women started expecting them — more importantly, wanting men to value an object they have. At a time when women had not access to economic independence or power, diamond rings turned out to be one of the best sources of wealth and insurance for rainy days.

De Beers was profitable because diamonds were so strongly associated with a (heterosexual) marriage commitment, but the company had less luck when it tried to expand its brand. In the 1980s, responding to feminism and women’s increasing economic power, De Beers sought to convince women that they too should receive diamond rings from their men. Yet the campaign flopped spectacularly, because they couldn’t get anyone to let go of the notion that a man’s love (and worth) — not a woman’s — was measured by carats.

What Happen Now

Of course, men enjoy wearing diamonds too. Over the past years, bling culture with its diamond jewelry has been values by both sexes in the hip hop community. And as more LGBTQ people become visible, men in jewels have gone mainstream. But women still have a lock on the diamond when it comes to engagement and wedding rings. According to the wedding website The Knot, just 7 percent of men wear engagement rings (most of which are worn by same-sex couples) and very few of those feature gemstones.

Indeed, the association of diamonds with marriage is so powerful that it is not clear how De Beers will survive the steady decline in marriage rates. With the industry in crisis once again, one strategy is to stretch love beyond marriage. As a recent Jared spot claimed, diamonds are for all significant others: mothers, sisters or even BFFs.

As we know, love can come in many different forms, and marriage is just one of them. But square or pear-shaped, if De Beers holds sway, it will feature diamonds — and many of them.