Once Exclusive to Women, Brilliant Earth Branches Out to Men's Jewelry
Brilliant Earth has long sold women's and gender-neutral collections. This is its first fine jewelery release for men.
Although we've been wearing bracelets, necklaces and rings for millennia, jewelry for men is somehow still an emerging category. (Tiffany's launched men's engagement rings just last year, for example.) Men are hesitant to slip on a suave necklace or pick out a few rings for a number of reasons — but few are worthwhile excuses. Sure, precious metal accessories are expensive, and wearing them out for the first time is an intimidating task, but it's easier than ever to shop for men's jewelry. No, you don't need to make a trip to the mall to visit an anchor like Zale's or suffer through a visit to a local boutique to check out its unisex offerings. There are places you can shop for jewelry online — and sustainably, too.
Brilliant Earth, a Denver-based digital-first jewelry retailer with more than 500,000 customers annually, launched a collection of everyday men's jewelry this week. Comprising 22 items in 87 total SKUs, the new category compliments the brand's current gender-neutral collections, Mx and Rings for Everyone, as well as existing engagement and wedding bands for men.
Staying in line with the brand's commitment to bettering the jewelry industry at large, 93 percent of the gold and 99.8 percent of the silver used is recycled, whether from post-consumer accessories, electronic components or factory scrap supplies. Plus, Brilliant Earth didn't just expand upon its engagement and wedding offerings and call it "everyday." These are all-new designs — bracelets, cuffs, cufflinks, earrings, necklaces and rings — conceptualized in the store's San Francisco studios. Some of the new releases are better than others, for sure, but its highlights (shown below) position Brilliant Earth at the top of this ever-growing category, not only because they're well-designed and -made, but because the brand continues to bring collections to market that adhere to its own strict manufacturing and sourcing guidelines.
"Our objective with this collection, and all Brilliant Earth products, is to diminish the negative impacts of dirty gold, reduce demand for newly mined metals and contribute to programs dedicated to improving small-scale mining practices," Kathryn Money, SVP of Merchandising and Retail Expansion, says. (There's an episode of Netflix's Dirty Money that explains dirty gold quite well.) “Metal mining, and gold mining in particular, is one of the most environmentally destructive types of mining, and gold miners often earn low wages in dangerous working conditions."
With rapid growth anticipated annually in the men's sector, it's important that new products are ethical, sustainable and traceable, but also appealing, too.
"We have a strong customer base of men who know and love our brand, and we are excited to expand our offering to meet the untapped demand we are seeing and provide him high-quality, ethical and on-trend fine jewelry for all occasions,” Kathryn Money, SVP of Merchandising and Retail Expansion, says. She explains that men's jewelry has steadily seen annual increases in demand for as long as she can remember. Last year, it was 17 percent, but that's in the everyday fine jewelry sector, not weddings, which has seen even greater growth. As such, these new Brilliant Earth pieces are meant "to enhance his everyday look," she says. They're designs "that anyone can make their own, layer or combine with existing pieces."
Brilliant Earth Men's Jewelry
