THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 6, 1996 TAG: 9610020049
SECTION: REAL LIFE PAGE: K1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY KRYS STEFANSKY, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 78 lines
ALL THAT GLITTERS is not gold.
Chances are, it's platinum.
After being ignored by an entire generation, platinum is back with '90s brides and grooms. They are choosing it for their engagement rings for its strength, its purity, its whiteness and its sentimentality.
``Platinum vanished from the American marketplace in the 1940s when it was declared a strategic metal during World War II and disallowed for use in jewelry,'' says Betsy Hardy, president of Hardy's Diamonds, a fifth-generation jewelry business in Virginia Beach.
Now, after the '80s gold rush where more was better and glitz meant glamour, engaged couples are scaling back in appearance if not in price. To be in vogue, they are choosing platinum over gold even though the decision can double, even triple the cost.
``It really is the metal of the '90s because of its cachet,'' says Hardy. ``It's not a metal that's flashy or showy. When a piece is going to be done right, it's done in platinum. The new, sophisticated designs are all done in platinum.''
The growing popularity of platinum, called the noblest of precious metals, has created two camps in the bridal world.
Traditional brides are influenced by the Victorian, Edwardian and Art Deco pieces passed down in their families. They want what their grandmothers had and ask for platinum bands and engagement rings.
Modernists pick platinum because they've heard it's hot and they're looking to be cool.
``It used to be just older people in their 60s, 70s and 80s who bought platinum,'' says David Long, owner of Long Jewelers, a company with three locations in Chesapeake and Virginia Beach.
The recent run for platinum means Long will add two entire cases of platinum jewelry in his Virginia Beach store after the first of the year.
More experienced jewelry buyers have long known that platinum is purer and stronger than yellow or white gold. That its whiteness enhances diamonds. That it mellows to a matte finish immediately recognized by other platinum sophisticates.
Now younger couples are showing up in Long's shops and leaving with as much platinum as they can afford.
``Usually by the time they've left they're getting a platinum head with a 14-karat yellow band,'' says Long, who tells customers that a head, or set of prongs holding a diamond, can last 10 years in white gold, 20 to 25 years if made in platinum.
Goldsmiths like Mark McFarlane, owner of Studio 29 in Norfolk's d'Art Center, say platinum wearers are sending a message.
``It's a prestige kind of thing,'' says McFarlane. ``If it's set in platinum it's a statement to be made.''
Several years ago one in 10 requests he received for custom jewlery was for platinum. About two years ago he sensed a shift. Now, one in five customers requests platinum.
McFarlane calls platinum a marvelous metal to work with.
``The wearability of platinum is more like butter than like a cookie. Platinum has a cohesiveness in its molecules that allows it to be pushed around but not worn off. Yellow gold loses molecules every day you wear it.''
Wearers like its luster and its purity, says Laurie A. Hudson, president of Platinum Guild International USA, a trade group with offices in Newport Beach, Calif. She says the platinum jewelry market has more than tripled in the past three years.
``There's a trend toward people really wanting to acquire and own the best,'' says Hudson. ``Not necessarily the most, but they're looking for things of quality. Definitely, the `less is more' aspect is manifesting itself in society. Not like in the '80's where everything was sort of over the top. People are now in an age where things are returning to the classics and the basics.''
A resurgence of platinum is creating a new era of platinum sophisticates.
``New brides and grooms like the aspect that not everybody knows what it is,'' says Hudson. ``It is the intelligent aspect. You have to know something to know about platinum. Less is more. I wear my platinum wedding band - it has diamonds - and another platinum ring on my other hand, and then that's it. Platinum speaks volumes.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photo
Engaged couples are scaling back in appearance, if not in price. by CNB