Like de Beers! Joking obviously. I am technically a millenial, as I graduated high school in 2000. I am admittedly one of the shameful diamond buyers. Never thought I would, but there's something satisfying about the self-sacrifice of spending a puke-inducing sum on a ring for a person whom you believe deserves it. I wouldn't try to explain myself, because I'm not sure I could. However, I bought a custom piece from a local jeweler who happens to be an old friend of mine, and it felt good (even if >60% of the price was for the center diamond that probably has a resale value of half what I paid for it).In its 2015 Global Corporate Sustainability Report, Nielsen found that 73 per cent of millennials would spend more on a product if it came from an ethical brand.
Yeah, de Beers pretty much makes Monsanto look like Oxfam. Back when I took gemology (back before the Internet) the instructor took 45 minutes to explain the diamond buying process and touched on some of the wars and slavery de Beers propagated in pursuit of exclusivity and profit. And then fifteen years later, Blood Diamond came out. I didn't wanna give the fuckers any money, so my wife's wedding ring has a high-grade Alexandrite instead. Carat-for-carat it was maybe double what diamond would have been, but it didn't go to de Beers. Of course, the jeweler said "if you want to do Alexandrite I'm going to have to go get a few stones to choose from from the Russian mafia so come back next week" so there's that.