Beyond the Solitaire: Gen Z’s Engagement Rings Tell a Story

At the end of last month, American pop singer Taylor Swift and her boyfriend, American professional football player Travis Kelce, announced their engagement on social media, instantly sparking widespread discussion online. The engagement ring on Swift’s hand in the photos quickly became the focal point. According to foreign media reports, the ring was co-designed by Kelce and a jeweler, featuring an overall retro style with a cushion-cut antique diamond estimated to be 8 to 10 carats at its center.
It’s not new for celebrities to choose large-carat diamonds for engagement rings, serving as both an affordable display of wealth and a symbol of status. However, beyond adhering to “big diamonds,” more and more celebrities are interpreting tokens of love in more eclectic ways.
Taking this year as an example, Hollywood star Zendaya Coleman and British pop singer Dua Lipa, who also announced their engagements, presented two different styles with their rings. Zendaya wears an east-west set cushion-cut diamond over 5 carats, deviating from the classic formula of a traditional round brilliant diamond set vertically. While Dua Lipa opted for a classic round brilliant diamond, the band features a heavier, wider design, giving it a sense of strength. Additionally, American pop singer and actress Selena Gomez, who announced her engagement late last year, has a marquise-cut diamond weighing 6 to 8 carats as the main stone, also breaking from conventional choices.

Of course, white diamonds remain mainstream for rings. Rhona Fitzpatrick, founder and CEO of jewelry customizer The Diamond Expert, recently told the BBC, “For ordinary people, it’s much more difficult to afford the same price.” Therefore, many jewelers are turning their attention to more cost-effective lab-grown diamonds to meet diverse design needs.
But for the new generation of consumers, an engagement ring is both a token of commitment and a piece of jewelry that expresses personality and tells a story. Compared to pursuing traditional diamond ring styles, today’s younger generation is making bold attempts in shape, colored gemstones, cuts, and bands, making a wider range of jewelry series one of the choices for young couples. The image-based social platform Pinterest’s 2025 Wedding Trends Report released this year points out that, driven by the younger generation led by Gen Z, vintage styles and colored gemstones are popular again, with a preference for non-traditional engagement ring designs like mixed metals, unconventional silhouettes, and color accents. Moreover, the currently popular trend of stacking has also been incorporated into engagement ring trends. The report notes that searches for “unique engagement ring stacks” have grown by over 1000%.

Mainstream media writer focusing on lifestyle and pop culture, Sarah Wood González, has also observed that more and more couples are abandoning the fixed style of a “solitaire diamond” in favor of design combinations that better suit their personal style and practicality. Under this trend, rings centered on gold designs, such as thick gold bands or mixed metal texture designs, are gaining favor among brides-to-be. London-based jewelry designer Rachel Boston, who owns her eponymous brand, told fashion website The Zoe Report in an interview that such rings highlight personality through sculptural lines rather than relying solely on sparkle or color.

Many luxury brands’ iconic series恰好 provide more design context for this trend, such as Piaget’s Possession and Boucheron’s Quatre series. The Possession series is known for its rotating ring design, combining the brand’s gem-setting craftsmanship, goldsmithing expertise, and artistic aesthetics. The playful rotating design conveys the brand’s long-standing advocacy for free expression and joy. Simultaneously, the concentric circle design also symbolizes eternal union. This year, Piaget introduced two more minimalist ring creations, featuring the brand’s signature engraved Palace Décor.
The Quatre series is characterized by its four rings with different classic textures, using geometric lines and architectural beauty to imply strength and protection. In the latest season, Boucheron created the new Quatre Classique Tube collection, further enriching its expression of mixed textures and stacking combinations. The new pieces use lightweight polished gold tubular elements to complement the classic four-ring patterns, ranging from angular, highly individualistic rings to more refined pieces designed for wearing comfort, incorporating rotating patterned designs.
There’s also the Cartier TRINITY series, famous for its three interlocking rings made of yellow gold, rose gold, and white gold, which not only showcases the concept of diversity but also carries expressions of all forms of love. This year, Cartier further enriched this series with three animal patterns—the white gold ring adorned with snake scales, and the yellow and rose gold rings outlined with black lacquer to depict leopard spots and tiger stripes.
Additionally, the Tiffany HardWear series and the Bulgari Tubogas series are also representative references for expressing love and personality. The Tiffany HardWear series symbolizes the transformative power of love, with its iconic linked elements interlocking with flexibility, emphasizing the courage and strength born from love. The Tubogas series draws inspiration from the Tubogas technique born in the late 1940s, an important identifier in Bulgari’s aesthetic language. Thanks to this technique, early gold materials could be shaped into ever-changing forms, thus representing an eclectic, transformative personality, and its thick gold form恰好迎合了当下复古潮流.

The Pinterest Wedding Trends Report also points out that Gen Z is very interested in rings with unique silhouettes and vintage cut settings. Among the new high jewelry pieces recently launched by Chopard in the new Ice Cube collection, there is a new diamond ring that uses the signature cut of the Art Deco era—the Asscher cut. This new piece延续 the series’ classic multi-band design, featuring a 3-carat Asscher-cut diamond as the focal point, set diagonally between two parallel bands.
Meanwhile, colored gemstones are becoming an increasingly favored choice. Cecily Morris, brand manager of the British jewelry brand David Morris, stated, “While white diamonds are eternally classic, confidence in colored gemstones is growing day by day.” This trend reflects both the pursuit of personalized expression and the benefit of the specific meanings associated with different colors.

For example, emerald, in ancient Egyptian culture, was both a status symbol representing wisdom and cleverness, and also served as the 55th wedding anniversary stone symbolizing faithful love. The September birthstone—sapphire carries the pure寓意 of love and luck. Pink gemstones are often associated with romantic, dreamy love stories, capable of evoking moments of happiness.
London-based jewelry designer brand Michelle Oh also points out that young couples are increasingly paying attention to the color and size of gemstones and are open to a wider range of gemstone categories such as tsavorite, tourmaline, and spinel. The new pieces launched by Van Cleef & Arpels this year in the Fleurs d’Hawaï series serve as a good reference, with vibrant colors like aquamarine, rhodolite, and citrine, both celebrating nature’s abundant vitality and symbolizing the richness and brilliance of love.
Furthermore, Prada’s recently launched Couleur Vivante series encompasses the use of gemstones like amethyst, aquamarine, Madeira citrine, pink morganite, and peridot, creating鲜明的色彩张力 through unconventional gemstone combinations, aiming to challenge established perceptions of “preciousness.”

Pearls are also a surprisingly elegant and durable choice. While this material is classic in jewelry design, it appears格外独特 in the context of engagement rings. Hollywood actress Emma Stone’s engagement ring features a stunning pearl取代了闪耀的钻石. Designs featuring a single large pearl surrounded by diamond clusters strike a balance between tradition and novelty.

It can be said that “non-traditional engagement rings” are redefining engagement jewelry. They break the stereotypes of wedding jewelry and represent contemporary couples’ pursuit of personality, story, and self-expression. Compared to conventional diamond rings, these more design-conscious and narrative rings are becoming symbols of a new generation’s romance.