Growing with Grace: Diamond Engagement Rings and Their Personal Significance
Three women share their emotional and sartorial relationships with their diamond engagement rings.
Diamond engagement rings are amongst the few jewellery pieces that gain significance and beauty over time, as a couple grows together. Not only do they represent the joy of the beginning of a couple’s journey, it also becomes a part of a woman’s daily style, around which the other jewellery is based. They can range from simple natural diamond solitaires to elaborate designs, but whatever it looks like, an engagement ring is bound to hold stories and many layers of meaning. We ask three women about their personal diamond engagement ring stories and what the ultimate symbol of love—the natural diamond ring—means to them today.
A companion for every phase of life
Most of us evolve numerous times through our lifetime, sometimes radically changing our dreams, beliefs, and personal style. But a natural diamond engagement ring is one of those constants that can adapt to any fashion transformation without losing its significance. That’s exactly what happened to Phuket-based designer and artist Anupama Sukh Lalvani, who experimented with androgynous looks as a young woman and embraced her femininity more fully later in life. But the exquisite antique engagement ring her husband picked out for her at an auction in England thirty years ago was a part of every phase.
“When I got married I didn’t have an inclination towards fine jewellery. But I’d never seen anything like my engagement ring. I thought it was stunning,” said Lalvani.
Lalvani pairs the natural diamond ring, which is a sparkling solitaire that can be worn with an unusual diamond-studded floral setting, with stacks of gleaming, geometric steel rings she designs for her jewellery brand en Inde. She believes that even though it is an unexpected combination, the shine of steel and the sparkling facets of diamonds complement each other very well.
“As I’ve evolved into the woman I am today, I feel like my engagement ring is the perfect balance to my masculine side which comes across in the steel and the feminine because of the multifaceted diamond.”
Anupama Lalvani
For a creative soul like Anu, who believes that jewellery evokes hidden depths of womanhood and romance, there couldn’t be a combination more evocative, symbolic, or perfect.
A talisman of unconditional love
Growing up as an only child to parents who adored her as much as they adored each other defined how New York-based creative consultant Rymn Massand understands unconditional love. And she wears this familial bond on her finger, in the form of her mother’s diamond engagement ring, which was a gift from her parents on her 40th birthday. That the simple natural diamond solitaire set on a platinum band was a significant purchase for her father at the time of his marriage makes the ring even more significant to her.
“My mother wouldn’t have cared if she hadn’t gotten a ring,” she said. “But it meant something for my father to be able to give it to her. And then for her to give it to me, it’s a continuation of that symbolism and that love.” Massand is not into big, showy pieces of jewellery because she has always tried to emulate her mother’s minimal elegance. And the few pieces she has collected over the years, including her mother’s engagement ring, are meaningful because they hold histories within them.
Massand is not into big, showy pieces of jewellery because she has always tried to emulate her mother’s minimal elegance. And the few pieces she has collected over the years, including her mother’s engagement ring, are meaningful because they hold histories within them.
“My mother’s ring feels like a shield of protection. I find it extremely powerful,” she said. “It’s the only jewellery I wear. This is the one thing that I take off every night and put on each morning.”
Rymn Massand
As for her feelings about the diamond itself, she adds: “I never thought I’d care about diamonds, but I’m an Aries and diamond is my birthstone.” For a vibrant Aries personality like Massand, it represents radiance, inner strength, and clarity—much like her parents love does.
Adornment as an act of self-care
Vandana Verma, founder of the wellness website The Tonic, believes that well-being is for everybody. In her life, jewellery is one way she incorporates a ritual of self-care and symbolism into her day-to-day life. One of the key components of this practice is the one-of-a-kind engagement ring that her husband Gaurav designed himself. He based the ring on one his aunt had, and got Vandana’s ring size by making her wear a faux masking tape ring. Unlike a typical diamond ring with the solitaire sitting atop the band, the ring has a central diamond with two geometric bands inlaid with smaller natural diamonds on either side in a gypsy setting, creating a bold graphic look. She has kept the masking tape ring to this day.
“My relationship with jewellery was pure adornment in the past, but now the pieces I wear are almost talismanic in nature,” said Verma. “It isn’t quite like those astrologer-mandated gemstones, but more following my intuition for reasons I can’t quite enumerate.”
As a young girl, Verma was enamored by the jewellery collections belonging to her mother and grandmother, and that’s where her fascination with it began. Today, she lives in Goa with her husband and her style has shifted to a palette of breezy whites paired with stacks of delicate filigree gold jewellery. “I like jewellery I don’t have to take off, and so my engagement ring from Gaurav, a skinny diamond band my parents gave me for my 21st birthday, and a rotating neck stack are my dailies,” she said.
“Every time I look at my engagement ring my heart does a little squeeze, no joke.”
Vandana Verma
