Drake’s Diamond Necklace Is My Favorite Celebrity Jewelry Moment of 2022

It says a lot about millennial and Gen-Z consumer attitudes, writes Senior Editor Ashley Davis.

Ashley Davis Ashley.Davis@nationaljeweler.com

This screenshot from the Instagram page of jeweler Alex Moss New York shows the 351-carat “Previous Engagements” necklace he made for Drake. (Image courtesy of Instagram @AlexMoss)

I know a woman who was once at a relationship crossroads.

She and her significant other were either going to break up or get married (you’ve probably known couples in the same scenario), and the coming months would reveal the outcome.

At that time, the woman happened to find an antique diamond ring she loved at a really good price, so she bought it on the spot and tucked it away.

If the relationship continued, this could be her engagement ring, she figured. If she and her partner went their separate ways, it would be a right-hand ring. They ended up getting married, so a left-hand ring it was.

I know another couple who was talking marriage and planned to get engaged with a family heirloom.

One day at his parents’ home, the boyfriend’s mother pulled a ring from her jewelry box set with a large cubic zirconia, which she had worn decades ago on vacations in lieu of her regular diamond.

The girlfriend said she would prefer a ring like that to wear in her daily life, as she wasn’t comfortable walking around with a large diamond. Her boyfriend knelt down on the spot and proposed to her with the CZ. She still wears it to this day and never pulls out the heirloom.

Neither of these scenarios are what we millennials—a generation raised on Disney cartoon romances—would consider traditionally romantic, but they say something about who we are.

A much more famous man recently debuted an 18-karat white gold Y-necklace with 42 large diamonds, totaling 351.38 carats, each of which would individually make for a seriously sizable diamond jewel. (Mathematically speaking, that averages to more than 8 carats per stone.)

The man was rapper Drake, and the necklace designed by well-known private jeweler to the stars Alex Moss was dubbed “Previous Engagements,” a representation of all diamond rings the artist had considered, but ultimately resisted, doling out.

   
  
 


 
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A post shared by AMNY (@alexmoss)

While 42 possible engagements isn’t relatable to the average person, the average person hasn’t been romantically linked to the likes of Rihanna, Serena Williams, SZA, and Jennifer Lopez, to name a few.

What does strike a relatable chord, however, is the gesture itself and what it signifies. The engagement ring has long been the pinnacle jewelry purchase, but fewer Americans are getting married today.

In 1990, 29 percent of adults ages 25 to 54 were neither married nor living with a romantic partner, according to Pew Research Center. By 2019, that number had risen to 38 percent, and while some of that group is divorced, the biggest rise was in the number of people who had never married.

The 2022 American Family Survey by Deseret News and the Center for the Study of Elections and Democracy at Brigham Young University noted a steady decline in respondents who reported being married over the last seven years, with 50 percent identifying as married in 2015, down to 45 percent in 2022.

The number of people who report not being in a relationship at all has also risen. While 32 percent of respondents to the American Family Survey said they were not in a relationship in 2015, 37 percent reported not being in a relationship in 2022.

Of course, this isn’t news to the jewelry industry, which has been touting the rise of the self-purchasing customer for years.