I was more thinking about showy size of the settings, a new necklace that is HUUGGEE. Maybe the style will go more to thinks akin to paintings, or some other form of "expression".
Men, usually, eschew showy jewelry with the obvious exceptions.
I'm told the LMDs are very very sparkly, so maybe folks will turn up their noses at them because of that, and prefer the less shiny "natural" diamonds?
Good point on the settings. We haven't found a way to synthesize gold, despite many centuries of attempts by alchemists
So I could see "mass of metal" being its own statement. But how do you avoid the problem of "plating" rather than solid silver/gold/platinum? You can fake mass, at least visually.
I'm like FF in that I eschew jewelry. I wear a wedding ring, because, well, I'm married. But I had my wife (who offered to buy me platinum) buy me a cobalt chromium ring because I don't care. Why spend $2K on a slab of platinum metal instead of <$300 on cobalt chromium, which is going to be durable as hell and will still do its job (signifying to the world that I'm a taken man). I wouldn't mind a nice quality Swiss mechanical watch... But I went the Garmin smartwatch route, because it's got a lot more functionality than telling me the time. It tells me (via GPS) how far away the green is that I'm about to miss when I play golf ;-)
I don't think the lab-grown diamonds are any more sparkly. Sparkly, whether natural or lab-grown, is based on the "4 C's", but the "sparkly" portion is primarily the "cut" portion. For a round diamond, there's a classification called "super ideal" cut which basically means that all the angles of the cut are within ranges that are close/perfect for refraction and to make it as sparkly as possible. But both natural and lab grown can achieve super ideal. If lab grown diamonds are more sparkly, it's only because the people who bought natural diamonds couldn't afford the best of the best that met the super ideal standard.
They'll start creating ultra-luxury jewelry with precious metals and gems from asteroids.
That's pretty much where we are in the US. Except for the lower income quintiles, we're largely a "post-scarcity" nation. If you want to live like
@FearlessF , you can get by pretty cheap with all of your needs met. If you want to drive the sorts of vehicles that
@Honestbuckeye drives, well, you're gonna have to have some coin. But neither of them are in danger of being homeless, unable to clothe themselves, or starving to death.
So to an extent there has to be some level of "unobtainium" to signify status. I'd argue one aspect is handbags. There's NOTHING about them that need to be scarce. But by making them expensive as hell JUST because they bear a certain brand/label, it becomes a status symbol that is completely devoid of intrinsic value. At least with diamonds the intrinsic value is their scarcity... Or it used to be that way.
