Diamond Etiquette and Sumptuary Laws

💍Medieval sumptuary laws kept the “common people” from legally wearing precious stones. The laws were the result of the importance of jewels as symbols of rank. Wearing diamonds was only allowed for those socially superior.  

💍The wearing of a diamond ring by a young maiden was frowned upon. up until the early 20th C. A young girl had to wait until marriage to wear such an expensive or socially significant piece of jewelry.  

💍Diamond jewelry is most appropriately worn at more formal events and with formal attire. Experts say that nothing better reflects the importance of an occasion than diamond encrusted jewelry.   

💍According to British protocol, diamond tiaras are only to be worn by married women or members of the Royal family, thus many British women wore a tiara for the first time at their weddings. 

💍As for Pageant Royalty (Queens and Princesses) one’s “diamond crown and sash” should be retired when one’s reigning year is over, so as not to take the focus away from the new title holder.— Image source, Tiffany & Co.  

Sumptuary laws were an expression of this importance of jewels as symbols of rank. Wealthy citizens and their wives were repeatedly banned from wearing gold and precious stones proper only to their superiors. A French royal ordinance of 1283 commanded that ‘no bourgeois or bourgeoise... shall wear or be allowed to wear gold or precious stones or girdles of gold or set with pearls or coronals of gold and silver’. Not only noblemen's jealousy of wealthier nouveau riches caused the appearance of sumptuary laws.

From the second half of the thirteenth century onwards we find merchant communes themselves enacting sumptuary laws to restrain extravagance and pretension in dress among their wives and daughters, no doubt with the purpose to secure the stability of fortunes and the balance of relative civic rank. — From Central European University

🍽️Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia