‘Real’ or ‘lab-grown’? ‘Bloodstained’ or ‘green’? The highly-regulated words that describe diamonds define their narrative — and maybe even their value.
This is a transcript of a Subtitle podcast episode
Patrick Cox: Kavi, I’ve heard that you own a diamond ring.
Kavita Pillay: I do, just one.
Patrick Cox: Just the one! How big is it?
Kavita Pillay: It’s 90 carats.
Patrick Cox: Wow, what do people say when they say that?
Kavita Pillay: “Is that real?”
Patrick Cox: Of course, they do. And what do you tell them?
Kavita Pillay: Well I don’t want to be mugged so then I tell them the truth.
Patrick Cox: Where do you wear it?
Kavita Pillay: Well I used to like wearing it on the subway in Boston, because just the contrast of this massive, emerald cut diamond on the T, I knew that if I wore that out of the house I would have a conversation with someone.
Patrick Cox: Where did you get it from?
Kavita Pillay: I think it was a free-for-purchase at a vintage store.
Patrick Cox: My favorite kind of diamond.
Kavita Pillay: Me too.
Patrick Cox: I guess we also want to fantasize that the person we’ve just met on the subway styling a 2-inch crystal made from 100% carbon is an insanely rich princess. Hey, we all want to dream. And diamonds let us do that. They let us tell stories that we know aren’t true. Stories full of promise, empty or otherwise.
Well right now the diamond industry is going through a re-imagining of its story. And that includes the words it uses to tell that story. Not so much, “Is this stone real or fake?”
More like, “Is this genuine or artificial?”
Pure or man-made?
Blood-red or green?
From Quiet Juice and the Linguistic Society of America, this is Subtitle.
Today, why the language used to describe diamonds is changing.
And how that may affect everything from the future of diamond mines in Africa, to our understanding of authenticity.
Alina Simone: This is where this dispute rages over the definition of the word, diamond.
Patrick Cox: This is my friend Alina Simone. Over the years she has done quite a bit reporting on the diamond industry. And we’re in the diamond district of Manhattan, just a couple blocks from Times Square.
Alina Simone: The thing you need to know about the diamond district is that it is the least woke place in New York City.
Patrick Cox: How does that manifest itself?
Alina Simone: There are going to be men on the street, they’re going to think that we are engaged and our only reason for us being on 47th St between 5th and 6th Avenues is to find a ring for me. And they are going to try and get our attention. And they’re all men. I’ve never seen like a female diamond hawker on the street.
Patrick Cox: So down 47th St we go, stopping at window displays of stores with names like Larry’s Fine Jewelry and #1 Diamond Source. You look at the window displays, and you’re just bombarded with bling. Most of pieces have tags attached to them. Not with the price on — that’s for later in the transaction. These tags announce that they come with certification.
Patrick Cox: Where it says “GIA certified,” what does that mean?
Salesman: When you buy a stone, it comes with a blueprint of it.
Patrick Cox: It’s one of the salesmen Alina told me we’d meet.
Salesman: You know, you want to know what you’re buying. It’s a passport of the stone, where the color grade is, how the make is, everything it written on a certificate so you’re 100% sure what you’re buying, and what you’re investing in.
Alina Simone: What if it’s a man-made diamond?
Salesman: We don’t deal with that. If it’s a man-made diamond, we don’t want to get involved with that, it’s already getting ugly when it gets there.
Alina Simone: Why is it getting ugly?
Salesman: Because it’s killing the market. I mean, there’s buyers for that, who want to save money — and there’s buyers for something that’s natural.
Alina Simone: Natural vs unnatural?
Salesman: Unnatural. There’s a market for everything, right?
Patrick Cox: As we walk further down 47th St, Alina tells me about this linguistic battle over “natural vs unnatural.” Diamonds that take between one and three billion years to form and are mined from deep under the earth’s surface. And diamonds that are manufactured in labs over the course of two weeks.
Alina Simone: The product is the same. The origin isn’t the same, and so these linguistic tags, they’re really all about the origin: the story behind the diamond which has always been how the value of a diamond has been assessed.
Patrick Cox: There’s an organization that helps to politely enforce the language that Diamond sellers can use. It’s called the Jewelers Vigilance Committee. Yeah, vigilance.
Alina Simone: They used to patrol this street. They’re been around for 103 years. And they used to come down here incognito and look at the ads because that’s how people found diamonds you know, pre-internet. Now they do less and less of that, and the majority of their patrolling takes place online, on Instagram, Facebook, anywhere that a jewelry company might advertise but also resale markets like eBay.
Patrick Cox: I’m going to let Alina tell the story from here on out.
Alina Simone: Because they do all their patrolling online, I went to go visit the Jewelers Vigilance Committee at their office a few blocks away.
Tiffany Stevens: If you’re going to exchange your hard-earned money for a product, you want that company to be honest with what it is you’re getting, right?
Alina Simone: Tiffany Stevens is the President of the Jewelers Vigilance Committee, an organization that works with members of the jewelry trade to help maintain legal and ethical standards. For example, if a dealer sells you a diamond ring for $5,000 and it turns out to be a $50 cubic zirconia, you can take that dispute to the Vigilance Committee. They also investigate complaints regarding false advertising.
To ensure consumers are protected from fraud, the Federal rules say dealers have to disclose if their diamonds are manmade, and advertisements of manmade diamonds aren’t allowed to use words like “real,” “natural,” “genuine,” “precious” or simply:
Tiffany Stevens: The word diamond by itself — if you use diamond by itself — that implies a natural diamond. So, you can’t just throw the word diamond out by itself or you’re making an assertion that it’s a natural diamond. So, you do have to modify it every time.
Alina Simone: If you are a seller of mined diamonds and you see a competitor who produces man-made diamonds describing them as just diamonds, you can file a complaint with the Jewelers Vigilance Committee whose lawyers will investigate, try to work things out with the offending party — and if all else fails, escalate the complaint to the Feds.
Tiffany Stevens: We’re trying to create a level playing field for commercial activity, while protecting the American consumer. That’s our mission.
Alina Simone: But not everyone believes it’s that straightforward. Some diamond makers contend the mining industry has used its wealth and linguistic lobbying power to hobble its competitors. I reached out to Martin Roscheisen, CEO of Diamond Foundry — one of the buzziest brands in the man-made diamond business. He told me over a not-great phone line, what he thinks about the federally-approved words that diamond makers are asked to use. Terrible words, he says:
Martin Roscheisen: Worst words that no one would ever use in marketing.
Alina Simone: Words that won’t even fit on a cell-phone screen. Like “laboratory-grown,” “laboratory-created.” Those are the Federal guidelines. Not quite as catchy as:
Song excerpt: “Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend”
Alina Simone: Traditional mined diamonds may have a monopoly on words like “rare” and “pure” and “natural,” but their origin story is hardly flawless. Diamond mining has triggered bloody civil wars and caused massive environmental damage in some of the world’s poorest countries. Man-made diamond makers like to point out their product is free of all that stigma. They’ve tried to coin their own super-clean terms “green diamond” or “eco-diamond.” But these efforts have all ended with warning letters from the Federal Trade Commission. Even descriptors that are pretty harmless — like “above-ground diamonds” get noped.
I figured that if anyone was happy with this whole linguistic regime it would be the dealers of rare, natural, pure, below-ground diamonds.
TV commercial: What else is so rare? So naturally brilliant? So exquisitely pure that it can capture the light of your love? This year give her the diamond that will take her breath away.
Patrick Cox: After the break, traditional diamond makers strike back with their own linguistic demands.
Alina Simone: A hub for many dealers of mined diamonds is also in Midtown Manhattan, the Rapaport Group, which hosts a huge online trading platform for dealers of mined diamonds — and only mined diamonds. I asked the Group’s founder, Martin Rapaport, about the rules of the Federal Trade Commission, the FTC. I kind of thought he would be ok with them.
Martin Rapaport: With all due respect to the FTC, when it comes to diamonds, they don’t know what they’re talking about. Literally. Some people want to call them cultured diamonds, but they’re not cultured, ok? They call them laboratory diamonds, but are they really made in a laboratory? They’re made in a factory, ok? They’re produced the same way you would produce any kind of manufactured product. So what’s the problem?
Alina Simone: So what should the FTC require man-made diamond makers to state in their ads?
Martin Rapaport: They should state that this diamond — if they want to call it a diamond, fine — this diamond can be produced in unlimited quantities and cannot be relied upon to retain value.
Alina Simone: So you think it should have a little warning, like a pack of cigarettes?
Martin Rapaport: Yeah, I think it just needs to tell the truth.
Alina Simone: The truth. That can be a fluid concept in the world of marketing. And when it comes to a market with stakes as high as diamond dealing, the truth depends on where you stand. Is the FTC taking sides here? I wanted to find out.
Alina Simone: Reena Sud is a staff attorney with the FTC. She tells me the commission took a lot of factors into consideration when deciding what language should be used to describe diamonds; most importantly, factual evidence. Laboratory-grown may sound a little boring, but it’s pretty accurate — if the huge thrumming boxes that produce man-made diamonds are considered labs. Last year, after man-made diamond makers complained about the word “synthetic,” which had been in the guides for decades, the FTC weighed the evidence.
Reena Sud: It seemed that there could be some confusion by consumers when the term “synthetic” is used to describe a man-made stone to imply somehow that man-made diamonds are inferior. So given that likelihood of consumer confusion, we removed it.
Alina Simone: For those hoping for a bright-line definition between diamond and not-diamond, the FTC’s flexibility is a source of confusion and frustration.
Tiffany Stephens: I think it really reflects this larger cultural moment and cultural conversation we’re having about what is real and what isn’t.
Alina Simone: This is Tiffany Stephens from the Jeweler’s Vigilance Committee again.
Tiffany Stephens: It seems like we’re kind of caught between these two major moments as a species, between living in this very grounded reality and having certain technological advancements that create whole new realms for us.
Alina Simone: And for the traditional diamond industry, that technological churn means the goal posts keep moving. Take De Beers, a company whose name is practically synonymous with diamond mining. For decades, De Beers swore it would never sell manmade diamonds. But then, this year:
TV report: When you think of diamonds, you’re probably thinking of tradition, love, commitment, and forever. Well, now you can also think of affordable. Because a new company is transforming the lab-grown diamond sector.
Alina Simone: That new company is called Light Box Jewelry but was founded by De Beers. Tastes are changing. Consumers today want to know where their diamonds come from. And not everyone is willing to pay a premium for an adjective. Within just the past three years, sales of lab-grown diamonds have more than doubled.
I don’t know if that’ll affect the livelihoods all those salesmen in New York’s Diamond District. But maybe, just maybe, even they will grow to love man-made diamonds. Or whatever they’re called in the future.
Patrick Cox: would you care to tell us your name?
Salesman: Oh no, I thought you guys were going to purchase something. I thought you were showing her around, and then you would surprise her later over some dinner and wine.
Alina Simone: That’s what I told you!
Patrick Cox: That’s just what she told me, that you might think that.
Salesman: Why not? The night is still young right? Romance her. You guys have a good day.
Patrick Cox: And wouldn’t you know, there’s a movie largely set in New York’s Diamond district just out — or about to come out, depending on when you’re listening to this. It’s a crime thriller called Uncut Gems, starring Adam Sandler.
This episode of Subtitle was reported by Alina Simone. The podcast version of the story is available here and on Apple podcasts.
Subtitle’s sound designer is Tina Tobey. Thanks to Jackie Mow, Sauli Pillay, Alyson Reed and our partners at the Linguistic Society of America and the Hub & Spoke audio collective.
Subtitle is funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities.