Jewelry Expert Critiques Celebrities' Wedding Rings | Fine Points | GQ

LeBron this guy he's the poster child for playing with different looks and different things and different fields and vibes and colors and designs and he has a lot of rings we see him often wearing two wide diamond bands one vivid yellow diamonds and one white diamonds they're two rows each he carries that off flawlessly they're amazing I'm David Allen 25-year master jeweler and diamond tier making custom jewelry here in New York City today we're going to talk about men's wedding ring men's wedding bands and wedding rings were not even considered for a very long time until the 1940s men generally didn't wear it the only jewelry you might see on a man was his watch it's only recently that the the men's band whether it's his wedding band or his engagement band has become really popular notion and something in pop culture in culture that has any kind of trend and fashion attached to it it's a really really new thing the David Beckham is wearing super traditional yellow gold that rings about three and a half maybe four millimeters in width and it's very very round that's a really classic classic right Henry Goulding wearing something very similar a little bit wider it just looks great on him with that classic clean watch his crisp you know white t-shirt and suit it just fits his style so you have Nick Jonas in Kanye West wearing very similar rings dead flat on the top with a 90 degree angle on a flat side that's a real edge too at this rate that's a much more modern look to a thin wedding band you've taken that old notion of a thin gold end and you've made a much more stark and hanging it on which gives it a bit more of a modern feel to it so what we regard as the traditional wedding band today is actually not the wedding band that we recognize as normal for men to wear modern times didn't actually start to be a tradition until after World War two around that time when men were going off to war they put on bands on their left ring finger to remember their loved ones so this was for non married couples and married couples became a comfortable thing that people regarded as a special way to commemorate a relationship and that's when it began to stick as what we have as the traditional wedding band the wide band is something that is relatively new we've seen this come more common over the last 10 maybe 15 years and then you see on Ryan Reynolds for instance that's about nine millimeters wide give or take on jay-z that's probably close to nine or ten as well this is something we're seeing more and more of you see in these two bands they're slightly different shapes they're both little bit different alloys of yellow gold a one as Ryan is quite a bit richer yellow and on jay-z it's a bit of a paler yellow it's just a style thing as well it's not a quality thing at all but these wider bands they look great in any shape or design that that they're made in as well so Ryan Reynolds ring is hammered so this is done by taking a tool called a ball-peen hammer as a round head on the front and you tap hammer the piece all over the place as uniformly as you can and it gives these very slight indentations all over the ring and it becomes a surface design with surface texture jay-z's ring he has a brushed finish so you take a an abrasive and the way we do it is we put the finished ring after it's been polished on a motor-driven spindle and we with a rough emery paper the sandpaper we left the ring spin and we put this matte finish around the whole ring Dwyane Wade's ring is a much more modern look for a wide band as well this ring was in all likelihood machine made you see that it has on its edges about a one and a half millimeter beveled edge that looks highly polished so this will is cut out of a piece of extruded tube and cut to width and then with stationary tools as the ring spun it was cut to that shape so mixed metals are another great trend we're seeing a lot of see on denzel he's wearing two really thin bands stacked together one white one yellow so probably platinum and eighteen karat yellow gold by the look of it this builds great texture this also gives him the ability to wear his ring in a couple of different ways he can wear just his gold ring just his white ring where the yellow white white yellow he can play wrong with this any way you want and it builds a great lock great texture great collar play Steph Curry has a great ring also that is a yellow gold band with a strip of platinum I'm sure that's platinum because the contrast of the white gold after a plating will rub off eventually it's called rhodium rubs away pretty quickly would make these colors kind of mush together but here you have the stark contrast of the very very white platinum and the really nice rich yellow of the 18 karat yellow gold making a wonderful 2-tone ring for him Russell Wilson is wearing moderately widely it looks like it's about seven millimeters also it has white gold or platinum in the center and a bit of a twist and yellow gold rim on either side this is something we are seeing more and more of also these two tone rings with texture brought to the to the face of the piece as well Russell Westbrook always sharp he's got very clean style with his clothing you can see he brings that style to his jewelry as well that party I love ring is as clean and simple and elegant it really fits his style very well the cartier love BAM this is a ring that was born of the cartier love bracelet which has been arguably Cartier his most popular piece of jewelry for very long time and has an interesting history the love bracelet itself was designed and inspired by the chastity belt of Dave past right so you know if you know that they have to be taken off with a screwdriver the cartier love ring is a single piece of jewelry it doesn't have to be screwed on and off it still comes from the same the same place kind of neat to see especially men who sometimes fight the notion of a wedding band wearing something that well they may or may not know the history of it that it came from such a heavy notion but the design is great and it can show up in lots of different ways Spike Lee is wearing it really is a beautiful way here his looks white gold or platinum and he's wearing him next to a thinner yellow gold down we see spike stacking his rings all the time and this is a great look for him furthermore spike has just his ring up a little bit with one diamond where that screw head would be otherwise it might be a back around the entirety of the ring but you see that ring both ways it could have one stone that could have stones every other or all the way around there's another way you will often see these Cartier love rings with pave-set diamonds all over them so it's not just one stone in the dead center where the screw head was but you have little pave diamonds around the rest of the surface so John Legend is wearing a little more of an old-school wedding band in that we see this sort of pave diamond detail on a band where you have one strip of pave-set diamonds in the center of the ring with a contrasting color metal on the outside so it tends to be like this where the base of the band is yellow gold and the center is white diamonds but today as men are really letting loose with their style choices you'll see this in lots of different iterations black diamonds with white metal with rose gold with all sorts of different color combinations Tyrese has an amazing set of stack rings on right now this is straight-up clean and classic look chance the rapper is wearing a great ring here also clean sleek lines this is called channel set where the the whims of metal around the edge of the ring or push delicately over the edges of the stone so you have a very very clean sleek looking ring the ring has no surface detailing whatsoever and on the top you just see the diamonds they look like they're floating in the middle of this channel wall so very classic very clean really minimal so Pusha T is wearing an amazing ring this is what's loosely referred to as an eternity band big stones set with shared prongs going all the way around the ring this is a style that has mostly been for women over the last 10 20 30 years now it's something guys are wearing all the time even when men started wearing diamonds often it was simply a bad weather a simple ban or not it was a ban now you are seeing this trend where men are wearing these Center stones like a woman's traditional engagement ring poochy mean this guy to wear some jewelry I think every man should be comfortable wearing a big stone like this but not everybody's there yet I think you have to start somewhere so so maybe your first piece of jewelry won't be a 20 carat diamond and that's okay but the way Gucci wears these things he's so comfortable in his own skin that he pulls these these two rings off together so beautifully I mean his engagement ring is this giant pear-shaped diamond with diamonds all around the band on the prongs everywhere in his wedding band that humor is right behind it is a big eternity band with pave-set diamonds on it as well so you have a big diamonds little diamonds texture shape incredible this set that he wears off set is not afraid to wear big diamonds nor is his wife car TV and he bought her in a hundred carat heart shape diamond for her birthday he's got for himself here massive and will cut diamonds into giant stone that sits atop and all emerald cut and pave set diamonds all the way around it just suits him suits him really well these are well seven figures there's no question about when you get to 20 30 plus carats of a high quality you're talking about million plus to all the Rings for sure so for diamond cuts the modern round brilliant cut which is a highly engineered very symmetrical 58 facet diamond that was developed in the 1940s to maximize the brilliance of a stone it has become the industry standard it's 70% of what is sold for diamonds in the industry so by far the standard stone you have the emerald cut diamond which is a step cut stone a very clean geometric deco looking feel to it a rectangular shape with cut off corners you know the square would cut often referred to as an asscher-cut similar but it's the square the radiant cut the princess cut these are all geometrical as well but unlike the emerald cut in the asscher-cut they have lots and lots of facets that make the stones super brilliant sometimes even more brilliant than this round brilliant cut you have the cushion cut which has become massively popular today think of a pillow shape if you will soft sides soft rounded corners ovals but become massively popular in the last two years last year thirty percent of our engagement rings that we made were oval and then there's all these specialty cuts which are much much less common so this thorn ring that Iman Shumpert and Chris Paul are both wearing has become very popular trend especially amongst the NBA players it's a very cool look so the designer says that meaning behind these rings is the ability to break free from any struggle in your life and just keep pushing forward so I love the notion of this ring and the design is super cool and as nontraditional was one might think they are they're an easy option for a wedding band it's great to put a band that has other meaning to it on for your wedding day President Obama I mean the quintessential cool he's taken here the jumping-off point of a simple not too wide not too thin yellow gold band and turned it up on its head it has ribbed lines going through it it has perpendicular sets of wires on the ring it's been said people of you know started tripping about all president obama doesn't wear his wedding bands why and he made it very clear that he doesn't wear his wedding band when he's out in public shaking a lot of hands because it's so very special to him he doesn't want anything to have it with it I totally respect that LeBron this guy he's the poster child for playing with different looks and different things in different fields and vibes and colors and designs and he has a lot of rings we see him often wearing two wide diamond bands on vivid yellow diamonds and one white diamonds they're two rows each he carries that off flawlessly they're amazing and then you see him in a pair of Cartier love bounds one is black and gold so that's white gold with black rhodium it's called black rhodium but it's actually ruthenium plating on there and it's electroplated to the ring and stay there for a while it'll rub off eventually but you can have him replated and then next to it is a smaller stack two cartier love band with pave diamonds all great great set he really has fun with his jewelry love to see that [Music] the men's wedding ring it's a trend that is here to stay I'm certain of it this world has opened up too many guys are seeing all of these cool innovative different things being done in popular culture now that's when men tend to start to understand that they can go outside of their own box and Buck what has been a trend or the the simple basic thing that they've seen their whole lives and start to do things that have meaning to them that are really personal to them so anything from having your wedding band be something really cool really different stacking multiple bands different callers to getting yourself into a wardrobe of bands that you're constantly switching about and having fun with and changing on a regular basis this this is here to stay I'm sure

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Keywords: fine points, jewelry, jewelry expert, celebrity jewelry, celebrity rings, rapper jewelry, rapper rings, jewelry collection, jewelry break down, rappers jewelry, celeb jewelry, rings, rapper jewelry collection, jewels, expensive jewelry, expensive rings, wedding ring, wedding rings, celebrity wedding ring, celeb wedding ring, celebrity wedding rings, rapper wedding rings, rapper wedding ring, offset wedding ring, lebran james wedding ring, wedding band, gq, gq magazine

Id: onWNDpuQ0J8

Length: 14min 32sec (872 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 20 2020