Three weeks ago at London’s gleaming LoveLuxury boutique, owner Emily Abraham jammed a dozen Hermès bags on a spotless glass counter.
There was a coveted blue Kelly bag named for the actress Grace Kelly, a classic black Birkin with an 18-karat white gold clasp and an orange croc-embossed purse that matched the famously bright Hermès packaging.
“I’ve just got engaged,” said the customer, an ultra-polished woman named Saniya.
“And instead of asking for a ring, I’ve asked for an Hermès bag.”
Two days later, another shopper walked into LoveLuxury’s Dubai location and asked bag expert Souhaila Loudiy for the same thing.
The social media moments landed hundreds of thousands of views across TikTok, Facebook and Instagram.
They also hinted at a new kind of stone-walling.
More women are eschewing diamonds in favor of handbags when it comes to milestone markers like engagements, births and new jobs.
“I think it’s clear that handbags, particularly high-end bags, have replaced jewelry,” handbag expert and Fashion Institute of Technology professor Emily Blumenthal told The Post.
She points to the Fendi Baguette and the Chloe Paddington Bag as examples of Gen Z investment plays that might previously have been a pair of Tiffany studs.
“With the price of gold skyrocketing and the rise of lab-grown diamonds, jewelry doesn’t seem to carry the same cachet it used to,” Blumenthal added.
That sentiment is backed up by industry data that says the price of natural diamonds on the resale market has sunk more than 50% since 2021.
Meanwhile, a new report in the Financial Times traces the fall of the diamond emporium De Beers, which just plummeted from a $13 billion company in 2011 to $2.3 billion. It is allegedly on the block for just $1 billion.
Even with the resale price of Hermès Birkin bags falling a reported 38%, many New York women still want their money where they can see it — swinging off their arm.
“These days, bags retain more value than diamonds,” Richie Jolivette, a New York-based influencer, told The Post. “My ex-husband almost made me go broke, and I had to sell all the bags I had bought for myself before.”
Her jewelry, she said, didn’t have the same easy turnaround.
On revered resale platforms like Sotheby’s Auction House, the least expensive diamond piece — a white-gold bracelet — starts at $1,200. The least expensive Hermès bag is more than double that at $2,900.
Gem experts blame everything from the declining luxury market in China to the rise of lab-grown stones — a category that De Beers itself even tried to enter in 2018 through a doomed silo brand, Lightbox.
But for avid luxury shoppers, emotional baggage also plays into the (non) purchase.
“Diamonds are about forever,” Bryan Grey Yambao, a prominent fashion influencer and editor of Perfect magazine, told The Post. “They carry this weird baggage of associations: engagements, anniversaries, inheritance and ‘special occasions.’”
Yambao said shoppers find precious gems to be almost morbid.
“They’re giving this ‘leave it to your grandchildren’ aura,” he explained. A Chanel bag, by contrast, “is a bigger dopamine hit. It’s immediate… I’m in my forties, not my sixties. I’d rather have serotonin.”
Influencers like Campbell “Pookie” Puckett and Bri Marie Jax seem to agree.
On their wildly popular TikTok feeds, they have received designer handbags (Hermès and Yves Saint Laurent, respectively) as “push presents” while pregnant instead of the traditional diamond jewelry.
Cortne Bonilla-Oliva, the senior shopping editor at Marie Claire, did the same.
When she gave birth to her first child, Row, in late December last year, she opted for a $5,800 Bottega Veneta Hop bag as a “push present” instead of a diamond ring or bracelet.
“I already have four rings,” said Bonilla. “I didn’t need another.”
What’s more, the US Census Bureau says unmarried women make up 52% of the country’s total population — the highest percentage ever recorded. As marriage rates fall, so do birth rates, with a 7.8% slide in the past 10 years. That means there’s less demand for engagement rings and push present diamonds alike.
That’s a big problem for the diamond industry, which hasn’t yet figured out how to position its stone-cold glamour as a “little treat” (or a big one) for single women looking to splurge on themselves.
“The diamond industry spent the better part of a century convincing women that diamonds were the ultimate expression of love, preferably purchased by someone else,” explained Carson Griffith, a writer and luxury expert who tracks wealth porn for her Substack newsletter, Rich People Sh*t. “That’s a peculiar sales pitch in an era when women are perfectly capable of buying their own luxuries.”
When 30-something brand advisor Lucy Morris pulled through a rough financial patch last year, she decided to buy herself a present to celebrate her hard-won success. “It never even occurred to me to buy fine jewelry,” Morris told The Post.
Instead of a diamond baguette ring, she settled on a Fendi Baguette bag, as made famous by Carrie Bradshaw on “Sex and the City” and later carried by stars like Rihanna and Amanda Seyfried.
“I can use it regularly,” said Morris, who noted that diamonds feel more like a “sometimes” thing. “It’s arguably practical.”
On resale site TheRealReal, Fendi Baguettes in excellent condition typically sell for about 80% of their retail value. Diamonds fetch 30% less in the current market.
There is also some Prada psychology to consider: A handbag, unlike a diamond, can be spotted —and therefore coveted — from across the room. And walking into a perpetually hot restaurant like Via Carota with a bag from The Row sends a larger signal to the crowd.
“A diamond tells people you can afford something expensive,” Griffith explained. “A difficult-to-obtain handbag, like a rare Hermès or one of Matthieu Blazy’s new Chanel bags, suggests you can afford it and know how to get it. The latter can be a more impressive accomplishment.”
Even the diamond kingdoms on Fifth Avenue may be rethinking how they bling it on.
On Tiffany & Co.’s hotly anticipated 2025 holiday gift guide, the iconic brand featured diamonds in seven out of 12 of its top-listed gift picks — which means about 58% of potential presents were iced out. This year, just two of the first 12 items listed — about 17% — are diamond-encrusted, supplemented by yellow gold earrings and pearl station bracelets.
But those who fear the future of Audrey Hepburn’s favorite breakfast joint should rest easy.
Tiffany & Co. owner Bernard Arnault told investors on a July earnings call that earnings on watches and jewelry were up 9% and that ultra-rich customers were still buying precious gems along with deeper investments in solid gold pieces.
But just in case, there’s a haute hedge:
Tiffany & Co. has been quietly selling some fabulous handbags.
