The State of Jewellery 2025: Rituals, Value, and the Rewriting of Adornment

In the jewellery world, trend reports tend to read like seasonal mood boards in disguise. A carousel of chunky chains, dopamine colours and "unexpected materials" with the shelf life of an Instagram carousel. But really we should be analysing the jewellery industry through behaviour-led shifts, symbolic social trends, rather than fads. The trajectories that matter aren’t aesthetic; they’re anthropological.Let’s step beyond style to look at the cultural forces reshaping the category—not from the outside in, but from the inside out. Because while the jewellery market may be growing, its real transformation is psychological, emotional, and ritualistic.Value RewiredWhat we treasure is changing. And it’s not just about carats. The traditional markers of value in jewellery—scarcity, size, brand name—are being fundamentally re-evaluated. The jewellery industry, worth over $300 billion globally and projected to hit $520 billion by 2030, is undergoing a quiet revolution in how value is perceived and conferred. In part, this is economic. As inflation looms and wealth creation spreads eastward and downward, jewellery is increasingly viewed as both an emotional purchase and a strategic one.In March 2024, Sotheby’s reported a 97% sell-through rate at a major online auction. Even more compelling: 20% of all bidders were new to the platform, signalling not just interest, but growing trust in high-value digital purchases. Meanwhile, Amrapali’s London flagship saw a 300% increase in walk-ins asking for loose gemstones only—no setting, no ceremony. Pure value.At the high end, brands like Repossi and Moussaieff are seeing growth not just from collectors, but from second-time buyers—those who purchased jewellery once for sentiment, and now return to purchase for significance. Jewellery is no longer just about sparkle. It’s about substance.But more radically, value is now tied to meaning. To story. Stories create value. They provide context to all sorts of unquantifiable worth… In a world where money buys anything, it’s story that becomes status.Our work with Ben Bridge, one of America’s oldest jewellers, exemplified this. With over 110 years of heritage, Ben Bridge had loyalty but lacked modern relevance. Facing a category splintered by price wars, lab-grown upheaval and fast-moving sentiment, we repositioned the brand around a singular belief: Great Things Are Made In Time.That became the organising principle for everything—from gemstone advocacy to the BB monogram, tucked discreetly inside every engagement ring. Retail became ritual. Identity became intentional. Even their flagship purple was reimagined as a time-lapse gradient, a nod to evolution rather than tradition.The rebrand also went deep inside the business: from employee training grounded in AI empowerment and creativity, to new storytelling rituals at point of sale. Sales teams were trained not just in product specs but in narrative framing: who is this for, what chapter in their life does it serve, and how will the piece gain emotional patina over time?Because the customer no longer buys for possession. They buy for participation. A 2024 study by McKinsey and Business of Fashion found that 68% of millennial and Gen Z luxury consumers rank emotional resonance as more important than product durability. Jewellery brands must now compete not on stones, but on stories.Rituals RewrittenJewellery has always marked a moment. Engagements. Anniversaries. Christenings. It has served as a symbolic shorthand for relationships governed by tradition. But as our cultural norms evolve—more secular, more fluid, more atomised—so too does the function of jewellery.Half of Gen Z women believe an engagement ring should cost under $1,000. In 2012, just 5% of women bought jewellery for themselves; in 2023, it was 40%. And not just for major life events, but for micro-rituals: breakups, career milestones, the closing of a house, the completion of IVF, the end of chemotherapy. Jewellery isn’t waiting to be gifted. It’s being claimed.Retailers like Catbird in Brooklyn now offer “Breakup Bundles” with black diamonds and literature on personal renewal. The surge in self-marriage ceremonies—a growing cultural moment across the US, UK and parts of Asia—has created a new retail category: ceremonial, but not matrimonial. Brands like La Ceremony and Bleecker & Prince are capitalising on these shifts with custom rings inscribed with affirmations and astrological markers.As Celine Assimon, former CEO of De Beers Jewellers, noted in our What The Luxe podcast:“Everybody wants to own love. But love is not one-dimensional anymore. It’s complex. It’s evolving. And that complexity is the opportunity.”De Beers, historically synonymous with the engagement ring, has since shifted its marketing away from traditional portrayals of romantic love. With the rise of lab-grown diamonds, they’ve also been forced to defend not just the material, but the emotion attached to the material. As Assimon noted, “the product without design, without craftsmanship, without style, is just a commodity.”Jewellery must now hold space for a range of rituals—queer unions, non-marriage commitments, identity transitions, career rebirths. In this context, symbolism must stretch. This also invites more inclusive narratives: gender-neutral heirlooms, friendship rings, even birthstone-coded social identifiers.The Symbolic Arms RaceBeauty is now baseline. The algorithms have democratised aesthetics. With Midjourney, Pinterest, and generative AI tools, even mass brands can create something that looks expensive. But looking expensive is not the same as feeling valuable.Which is why symbolism is the new arms race in luxury. As material innovation becomes accessible, what differentiates a piece isn’t its form—it’s the force behind it. Its provenance, its metaphor, its embeddedness in a larger story.Symbolism creates memory. A Cartier Juste un Clou is not simply a bent nail. It’s a rebellion, a relic of 1970s New York. A Bulgari Serpenti is not just a motif. It’s a code: of sensuality, power, myth.Luxury brands that understand this treat their collections not as catalogues, but as chapters. Boucheron’s Histoire de Style reinvents archival pieces with contemporary flair—each launch tied to a season, a woman, a gesture.At Ben Bridge, we embedded symbolism at every level. The in-store ritual of "The Great Remaking" invites customers to repurpose heirloom pieces into new settings, collapsing the past and present into a single artefact. That’s what symbolic design looks like: not louder, just deeper. Less algorithm, more alchemy.The Business of BelongingWe’re entering an era where every brand is a cultural brand. Because what people buy is no longer separate from what they believe. This is especially true in jewellery, which sits at the intersection of identity, value, and symbolism.Consumers aren’t just buyers; they’re participants. Jewellery drops now resemble sneaker culture: limited runs, influencer seeding, gamified access. Brands like Kimai and Mejuri have built loyal followings not just through product, but through purpose, inviting consumers into their value systems.This isn’t about virtue signalling. It’s about belief design. And that belief must be enacted across every touchpoint—from the digital shopfront to the physical retail experience. If you aren’t putting story between your customer and commerce, you risk buyer's remorse. Conversion isn’t the apex. Belief is.Take Swarovski’s experiential flagship redesign, which combines museum-level curation with high-stakes retail theatre. Or Frank Darling’s at-home preview kits, which turn the living room into a private salon. EIP Privé does over $1M in annual transactions via WhatsApp alone.And at the highest end, we’re seeing high jewellery and gaming converge. Louis Vuitton’s collaboration with League of Legends unlocked in-game customisation and exclusive access to physical pieces—a metaverse play rooted in status and achievement.Then there’s the rise of cultural coding: jewellery as insider language. Coded pearls. Recast charms. Semiotics over sparkle. What once decorated now declares—allegiance, belief, belonging.Jewellery's Existential TurnThe question facing the category now isn’t one of style, but of substance. In a market flooded with choice, where beauty is ubiquitous and luxury has lost its edge, jewellery’s power lies in what it makes us feel—and what it allows us to say about ourselves.Meaning is the new scarcity. Ritual is the new category. And identity—the fluid, self-authored, beautifully contradictory kind—is the new status symbol.So as the materials evolve, the formats shift, and the rituals rewire, the challenge isn’t just to keep up. It’s to make these things matter in new ways. Ways that your brand can own.Matter Of Form is a design consultancy specialising in brand, CX and digital innovation for timeless brands. To find out more about what we do, get in touch with one of our consultants at hello@matterofform.com. Discover how the $520 billion jewellery industry is transforming through ritual, meaning, and identity in 2025. From self-purchase trends to symbolic storytelling, explore the cultural forces reshaping luxury adornment beyond traditional aesthetics.

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The State of Jewellery 2025: Rituals, Value, and the Rewriting of Adornment