Where do trends start?

[AprilBaby]

When I got married everyone had a .50 yg round solitaire. When my sIL got married the marquise was in. Early 2000 the three stone started as did the princess and white gold. Then the halo came in. Now the cushion is getting popular. Where do trends start? Bridal magazines? Trade shows? Is there a new trend starting now? Usually I see stuff here first and then in real life. What's next????

 

[Enerchi]

I agree with your pattern! My first ering was a .50 RB in wg - and I had NO input whatsoever because that fiance's uncle was a jeweller - it was all preselected for me.
My ering in 1984 was a marquise and now I've reset to a 3 stone... omg... I'm in the trend!!!

But I am curious as well - where do the trends start??

 

[HollyS]

It's like fashion. If you wait long enough, it all comes back in style.

Hence the popularity of platinum and white gold - - like the first half of the last century. Quite a few of today's designs are just a bigger is better version of what was popular in the Edwardian to Deco periods, for instance.

 

[Haven]

When I was studying costume design in college we learned about silhouette trends and how, over time, the fashionable silhouette basically expands and shrinks. I wonder if there's a similar science to jewelry trends.

I'm not usually one for trends, but I fear I am very much wearing a trendy ring with my antique cushion set in rose gold! I really struggled to find pictures of RG rings when I was having my setting made, and now they're all over the place.

 

[Dancing Fire]

When I got married everyone had a .50 yg round solitaire. When my sIL got married the marquise was in. Early 2000 the three stone started as did the princess and white gold. Then the halo came in. Now the cushion is getting popular. Where do trends start? Bridal magazines? Trade shows? Is there a new trend starting now? Usually I see stuff here first and then in real life. What's next????

yes,nowadays most of the girls are expecting a 2ct Ering.

 

[Circe]

Read Connie Willis's Bellwether,

(No, seriously, it's hilariously funny.)

In it, she posits that people are a lot like sheep: up to and including the tendency to follow given individuals against all reason. I think that while she may have started off tongue-in-cheek, she ended up with the truth.

When I was a teenager, I used to refer to it as "getting the memo" when I arrived at school wearing the same color or style that half the class had chosen to don - but, really, it wasn't that surprising given that we all shopped the same stores during the same waves of fashion. Same thing here, I think: it's a combination of people picking from preselected options (preselected by store buyers, and probably on the basis of what they've seen our bellwether equivalents, celebrities, recently wearing), and then having a kind of echo chamber going on in their intimate social circle ....

 

[rubybeth]

I think I remember reading on PS a while ago about this, and some posters were saying that their mothers' big solitaires seemed 'gaudy' to them when they got married in the 1970s, and with the high prices of commodities like gold and diamonds, smaller sets came into popularity out of necessity. I think that's probably one reason halos have become popular now, aside from the fact they can be absolutely beautiful.