Sarah Once Wore an Engagement Ring All Day Just to See If Anyone Would Notice. Nobody Did.

Volume 13 – Summer 2025

She was in her late twenties. She slipped it on, went to the sandwich shop across the street, and waited. Nobody noticed. The experiment failed, but the story is a perfect opening to this issue’s real point: you don’t need a proposal to wear a diamond. Sarah’s own first diamond purchase, a pair of hoops that were ostensibly for inventory and never made it into the case, is a small, joyful argument for treating yourself to the piece you’ve been waiting for someone else to give you.

Beyond that, the issue goes deep on summer as engagement season (five reasons it’s the most popular time for proposals, plus how our custom design process actually works), the summertime gems worth knowing, ruby’s natural fluorescence, peridot’s volcanic origins, and spinel’s long history of being mistaken for something it isn’t, and FOPE’s All in Me campaign, which makes a compelling case that your jewelry can hold multiple versions of who you are at once.

Read the Summer 2025 Illuminations and consider whether this is the summer you finally buy that piece for yourself →