2025-10-02
36 分钟The Economist.
In the 1940s, De Beers had a problem.
The Great Depression a decade earlier had left it with vaults full of diamonds and almost no one who wanted to buy them.
If only there was a way to convince post-war America to embrace the stones.
The diamond engagement ring.
How else could two months salary last forever?
A diamond is forever.
De Beers.
The ad campaign worked.
In just a generation, popping the question without a diamond became almost unthinkable.
In Hollywood, gossip columnists wrote about lavish proposals and movie stars wore diamond jewelry on screen.
Diamonds are a girl's best friend.
But De Beers was more than just a smart ad campaign.
The company had a near monopoly on the supply of diamonds.
Diamonds were discovered in South Africa in the 1860s,
and by the early 1900s, one single company, De Beers, controlled about 90% of the world's production of rough diamonds.
But now, that business model is under threat from an almost perfect substitute.
We now offer lab-grown dream diamonds you can actually afford.
Discover real brilliance at fabulous prices.
Cheap lab-grown diamonds, chemically identical to mined stones,