Icons Still Selling the Diamond Dream

Marilyn Monroe and Catherine the Great - icons separated by two centuries, but each of them still an active brand ambassador . . . for diamonds.

This week was the centenary of Marilyn's birth (1 June 1926) - with exhibitions, celebrations and numerous events to remember her remarkable but tragically short life (she died aged 36).

She will, forever, be remembered for "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend" in the 1953 movie Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.

And for her diamond-encrusted Art Deco Ladybird watch. She was rarely seen off-screen without it.

Blancpain, the Swiss watchmaker, introduced the Ladybird in 1956, with the proud boast that it was "the world's smallest round movement" - and is still making the watch today.

To mark Marilyn Monroe's centenary, it has created a limited edition of seven unique watches, each set with 1.36 carats of diamonds, as a tribute to the watch she wore.

Rewind 197 years from her birth to that of Catherine the Great. She overthrew her husband, Peter III, to become empress of Russia, and was famous for her extravagant jewelry collection.

She, too, will forever be associated with diamonds. She owned the 189.62-carat Orlov diamond, at the time one of the largest stones in existence, which was part of the Russian Imperial Crown Jewels.

It was incorporated into the Great Imperial Crown, made with an additional 4,936 diamonds for her 1762 coronation.

Her personal collection included cherry drop diamond earrings (pink diamonds), a pink diamond diadem, and a necklace of 27 cushion-shaped diamonds that sold at Sotheby's Geneva in November 2005 for $1.5 million.

Catherine the Great is back in the news this week because Sotheby's New York has just announced that it is selling some of her silver and old-cut diamond-set flower dress trimmings.

Their whereabouts had been a mystery for almost a century. The Bolsheviks who came to power in the 1917 Revolution sold them at Christie's London to raise some much-needed cash.

But the gems have now resurfaced and are among the highlights of a sale on 17 June.

Legends born a century ago, or three centuries ago, may no longer be with us.

But their connection to diamonds still largely defines them. Catherine lived in age when diamonds were the preserve of royalty and the aristocracy. The serf class over whom she ruled, with a rod of iron, would never so much as set eyes on a diamond.

By the time Marilyn was born diamonds were still a luxury (global production then was around 12 million annually, compared with around 100 million today), but they were no longer beyond the reach of most ordinary folk.

The allure of diamonds transcends history.

Catherine and Marilyn were radically different in power, context, and persona, but they are, in effect, still acting as brand ambassadors for diamonds.

Marilyn, epitomized femininity and democratized the mystique of diamonds, reframing them as objects of desire, aspiration, and glamor, but still within reach.

Catherine, something of a man-eater by all accounts, embodied diamonds as absolute power: rare, untouchable, a language of dominance and divine right.

What persists is not just the stones themselves - Catherine's jewels in the Kremlin Museum, Marilyn's watch in the Blancpain museum - but the narratives attached to them.

Their stories are the stories that still sell diamonds to this day.

Have a fabulous weekend.