Blood diamonds and lab grown diamonds intertwined

Back in 2006, the movie "blood diamond" came out and made a strong impact across the world. It's star, Leobnardo Dicaprio, has since been quite the nemesis of the diamond industry. The fact that the film came out a couple of years after the Kimberly Process has been initiated (which was designed to end the "blood diamonds phenomena) enraged many people in the industry. These people worked long and hard to improve the conditions of workers in diamond mines across Africa, and they felt the movie portrayed the whole community in a very bad manner.

Dicaprio, fresh off a few more Hollywood hits such as "the wolf of wall street" and his oscar winning role in "the revenant", has added insult to injury by investing in the "Diamond foundry" company in 2016. This California company was one of the pioneers of lab grown diamonds. The company was founded by a Silicone valley milionnaire named Martin Roscheisen which attempted to grow real natural diamonds artificially. Being a well-known philantropist and enviromental activist, Dicaprio was enthusiastic about the project claiming that manufacturing and purchasing lab grown diamonds is better for the enviroment and reduces the price humans involved with this industry must pay.

Transparency issues arise lately

The FTC (federal trade comission) has sent seize and desist warning letters last month to 8 US companies specializing in lab grown diamonds. Among the concerns were complaints, received by the FTC, that these companies (including "diamond foundry") have advertised diamond jewlery online, without clearly stating that they included lab grown diamonds, and not natural, earth mined diamonds.

The FTC also requested these companies to consider revoking terms such as "eco friendly"diamonds etc as they cannot be proven. From now on, ruled the FTC, any of these companies' advertisements or certificates can't include terms such as gemstone name (e.g 'Ruby', 'Sapphire', 'Diamond' or even 'stone') without including the terms "lab grown" or "lab created". This ruling clearly sets natural diamonds and lab grown diamonds as Two seperate categories. 

How to avoid misleading information regarding lab grown diamonds?

Luckily, for natural fancy color diamond buyers, this is a none issue. That's because all lab grown diamonds are in the colorless/white diamonds spectrum. Fancy color diamonds are so unique and rare, modern science hasn't quite figured out how to copy their formation. Obviously, there are enhanced color diamonds (by HPHT or Irradiation process), but those can be easily spotted by any grading lab such as GIA etc.

View our updated collection of rare natural earth mined fancy color diamonds.