The Top 39 Jewelry Trends of 2025

Style on the rise: gems

Hand chains

For centuries, hand chains have been part of ceremonial dress in cultures across India, the Middle East, and North Africa. But in recent years, they’ve quietly crept into Western fashion — not as statement pieces for a special occasion, but as everyday adornments worn like rings or layered bracelets.

Their appeal is twofold: they’re instantly distinctive and surprisingly versatile. Unlike standard jewelry, hand chains decorate an often-overlooked part of the body — the back of the hand — creating an elegant silhouette that works well with both minimalist and maximalist styles.

What’s especially notable is the consumer shift toward more unconventional jewelry forms. Jewelry designers are responding to increased demand with more small brands introducing modular or adjustable hand chains that can double as necklaces or wrap bracelets.

The rise of stacking and layered jewelry also plays a role. Consumers aren’t just buying a single necklace or ring — they’re curating a full ensemble, where each piece complements the other. Hand chains offer a unique bridge between rings and bracelets, giving them utility in layered looks.

In a fashion cycle increasingly driven by remixing the old and globalizing the niche, hand chains are a perfect storm: a historically rich accessory, made modern by changing tastes and a growing appetite for jewelry that feels both subtle and striking.

Style on the rise: floral

Dainty watches

In an age of maximalist everything, wrists are going minimal. The dainty watch is quietly making a comeback, not for its function, but for its form.

These timepieces, often under 30mm, channel the elegance of another era. Think 1950s dress watches or Art Deco styles — refined, purposeful, and easy to miss unless you’re looking closely. But that’s the point. In forums like r/Watches, collectors describe them as “just enough” — a design that complements, rather than dominates.

Part of the appeal is also how dainty watches sidestep gender norms. They’ve quietly become unisex (a shift also seen in recent perfume trends) — worn by men who find oversized watches clunky and by women tired of sparkle-heavy “ladies’ editions.” The shift reflects a larger trend in fashion: form following personality, not stereotypes.

And for collectors, they offer entry into a world of timeless mechanical beauty, often at a lower price point than their larger counterparts. In auctions and vintage shops, demand for small, well-kept pieces — especially mid-century Swiss brands — has quietly grown. They’re portable heirlooms, elegant investments, and proof that sometimes, less really is more.

Luxury jewelry

Once the exclusive domain of the ultra-wealthy, luxury jewelry is undergoing a quiet transformation — one that’s less about status signaling and more about investment and self-expression.

Forget the $500,000 necklace behind a velvet rope. Today’s buyers are flocking to the mid-luxury segment — pieces in the $5,000–$100,000 range — where the focus is on craftsmanship, rarity, and resale potential. For investors, this isn’t just a splurge — it’s a store of value. In times of market volatility, diamonds and gold carry an old-world appeal: tangible, timeless, and with lower correlation to equities.

But it’s not all spreadsheets and strategy. The emotional dimension of luxury jewelry has never been stronger. Consumers are increasingly customizing their pieces to reflect personal stories, family milestones, or even astrological signs. One-of-a-kind designs and small-batch collections are on the rise, catering to a generation that’s less interested in labels and more drawn to meaning. Reddit threads are filled with buyers praising the ability to “design a piece I’ll pass down one day,” or “finally get a sapphire that isn’t factory-standard.”

And while heritage names like Cartier and Tiffany still dominate, independent brands and upstart ateliers are gaining ground. Their edge? Offering exclusive, ethical, and often bespoke options that appeal to buyers who want something special — but don’t need a waiting list to get it.

Style on the rise: gold-silver mix

Flat back earrings

While many jewelry trends are driven by celebrity dynamics, the rise of flat back earrings is rooted in pure consumer behavior.

The backside of traditional earrings is typically not flat, so wearers often remove the earrings before sleep to avoid discomfort. This takes time though, and the average number of earrings per ear is on the rise, exacerbating the issue.

As the digital products we use every day increasingly compete for every minute of our attention, the products that buy us more time are increasingly valuable. Flat-back earrings, one of the top earring trends today, address this and are touted as more convenient because the flat backs make them more comfortable to wear while sleeping. This frees up time, both before bed and after rising, making flat-back earrings not only a comfort product but also a time-saving product, similar to glueless wigs, one of the top hair trends.

Pierced ears are getting more popular over time; over 30% of Americans born since the mid-70s have at least one piercing, compared to under 10% for people born in the 60s or earlier.

One of the adjacent trends to flat-back earrings is the growth in piercings for kids and even babies. Many parents with earrings want their kids to wear them too, but worry that traditional earrings may hurt or irritate sensitive skin. Since flat back earrings—also sold as "safety back earrings" on Amazon—are safer to apply, they're often a parent's first choice. And since 14% of the US is under the age of ten, making earrings available to this younger demographic means tapping into parents’ spending power while expanding the overall market—and potentially getting new customers for life.

Lab-grown diamonds

De Beers has spent the last eighty years selling diamonds at a huge markup, making the high price a part of the sales pitch and now they're selling a competing product for 80% less. Given their reliance on high prices, why sell lab-grown diamonds—and why sell them at such a discount?

While lab-grown diamonds are currently a smaller share of the overall market at around 15%, they're much cheaper than natural ones, and can only be distinguished using specialized equipment.

It's not the first time De Beers has faced the problem of increased supply. In the 1960s, Russia began mining diamonds in earnest; their diamonds were smaller than African diamonds, but the sheer supply threatened to overwhelm the market—so De Beers started marketing non-ring jewelry with smaller diamonds as a way to control market perception and keep their core business safe.

This time around, with lab-grown diamonds, De Beers can once again separate the market for engagement diamonds, protecting it from an increase in supply—and by choosing their own marketing messaging, and a low price-point, they can emphasize price rather than sustainability, obviating awkward questions about conflict minerals.

One very clever trick some diamond marketers, like the company Brilliant Earth, use on Facebook: targeting unmarried women with ads focused on getting them to share their partner's email under the pretense of dropping a hint. "Dreaming of the perfect ring? Click ’Drop a Hint’ on any item on our site to share your favorite ring styles." The most clever part of this campaign is that once they have the email address, advertisers can target the partner with ads for engagement rings. This solves the key problem in selling diamond rings: the person who wants the product is not the person who buys it. By convincing people who want diamonds to hand over the email addresses of the person who could buy them one, diamond companies outsource the engagement-ultimatum to a globally distributed team of copywriters, digital ad buyers, and conversion-optimization experts.

More diamonds per piece

As lab-grown diamonds continue to erode at the price of natural diamonds, the jewelry industry is coming up with creative ways to avoid shrinking the market size. One of the latest jewelry trends is to simply increase the number of diamonds per item of jewelry, maintaining price points despite falling diamond costs. Even though the price per diamond may be going down, this keeps the price per item constant and keeps the market from shrinking alongside declining diamond prices.

Much in the same way that compact cars sold well when gas was expensive, while SUVs and Hummers were popular when it was cheap, jewelry companies adjust the products they offer based on the cost of the inputs. Tennis necklaces are a case study in this. They're a necklace made from lots of diamonds.

More affordable diamonds have created another growing category of jewelry: the travel ring. It’s a ring that looks similar to a more expensive one, but is cheap enough that loss or theft wouldn't cause nearly as much disappointment. As lab-grown diamonds have improved, the visual differences between them and natural diamonds have shrunk, but consumers who own traditional diamonds often don't feel that their products have been devalued. They just know they have a safer, lower-risk alternative to wear.

Permanent jewelry

The rise of the permanent jewelry category – jewelry that’s literally welded on – highlights a fascinating business calculation that brands are now making.

One source of recurring revenue for jewelry brands is consumers’ tendency to lose their jewelry and go back for more. Another source is the inevitable fall of an item’s in-fashion status.

While permanent jewelry, which cannot be removed, fails at bringing in recurring revenue, it also means the wearer essentially becomes a 24/7 walking billboard for the brand.

And as the younger generations increasingly look to their peers and to creators for trusted recommendations, some jewelry brands are revisiting this calculation. It’s similar to the calculation SaaS companies often make when deciding on freemium models: asking the question of whether it’s better to have a high-referring free user or a non-referring paid user.

Clothing brands often pay vast amounts for influencers to wear their brand even just once. The price they’d pay to have the clothing worn permanently would surely be astronomical.

In many ways, permanent jewelry is a modern take on the friendship bracelet, possibly the originator of all bracelet trends. The makers of these bracelets, which first became popular in the 1970s, were strategic. For one, the bracelets have a built-in viral loop. Everyone who buys one necessarily shares it with another person. The creators also successfully pushed, against the norm, for the bracelets to be socially accepted as unisex, essentially doubling their potential market size (just like what is happening with makeup and fragrance trends).

Decades later, permanent jewelry is on the rise, emerging as one of the most intriguing new jewelry trends reshaping how people wear and think about accessories. It’s often made of gold so that it can be taken through metal detectors and so that it’s hypoallergenic. Hypoallergenic jewelry, also called implant grade jewelry, is trending particularly among the same younger demographic.

Self-purchases over gifts

A significant portion of the traditional jewelry industry targets men who are buying a gift. Now, brands like Atolea are trying to expand the market by selling pieces directly to wearers, sparking one of the key jewellery trends.

To make the leap, jewelry designers are now creating jewelry that’s made to be worn every day. These rings, necklaces, and earrings are still aesthetically pleasing, but more durable than the delicate showpieces made for special occasions.

In the case of Atolea, every piece is completely waterproof — the color won’t tarnish if you take a shower, walk in the rain, or work up a sweat at the gym.

While many brands typically market jewelry as something a man buys for a woman on a special occasion, these brands have tried to shift the norm. They've found that many of their customers are treating themselves out of the blue rather than waiting for someone else to buy them jewelry for a birthday or Valentine's Day, a product of the continual rise of the self-care movement, a key health & wellness trend.

In this way, they’re taking a product that has always existed and changed not only the customer, but also the context in which it's appropriate to purchase. In making these shifts, Atolea seems to be creating a new and larger market for jewelry.

Hypoallergenic jewelry

Despite only 2.4% of Americans being Jewish, a whopping 40%+ of foods in American grocery stores are Kosher. It’s a labeling play that has massive ROI.

Strategically framing or labeling a product can sometimes be more important than the product itself. Many consumers are allergic to traditional metals used in jewelry so companies are increasingly selling “hypoallergenic” jewelry.

The term “hypoallergenic” is actually not federally regulated so brands can freely use the term without any ramifications, just like the "non-toxic" beauty trend. The term “implant grade earrings” is also on the rise.

The trend illustrates how important it is in retail to stay ahead of the new ways that people are describing old products. We’ve previously highlighted a similar phenomenon where savvy low-carb bread brands added "keto bread" to their listings' keywords right as interest in the diet started taking off. These early entrants benefited from a wave of new customers, and were even able to charge more for their product.

Piercings at retailers

With the shift towards online shopping, one of the most transformative retail trends, traditional brick-and-mortar retailers are exploring creative strategies to attract customers back to their physical locations. One approach is providing services that can only be done in person, like professional piercing. CVS and Target are among the big box retailers to recently start offering piercings.

In parallel, the average age of a first piercing is decreasing, in part because of the evolution of piercing shops. Historically, piercing was done in tattoo parlors which made them less acceptable for parents taking in younger kids. Many parents felt off-put by the stigma of entering a tattoo parlor with a young child.

The piercing market too has largely been fragmented and dominated by independent businesses, with no major players. In response to these shifting dynamics, Rowan is growing its piercing service which trains registered nurses to do piercings, even offering piercings for consumers as young as 1.