Oval commitment rings have become fashionable. We tell you why

When Travis Barker proposed to Kourtney Kardashian, he did so with a 12-carat oval stone ring from the jeweler Lorraine Schwartz. The reality star is the last to show the favorite size of the famous ones: the oval engagement rings adorn the fingers of Ariana Grande, Hailey Bieber, Serena Williams and Blake lively, among many other celebs.

In fact, oval rings are stirring up more and more interest among... Well... Everybody. According to Google Trends, "oval engagement rings" has been the most sought after phrase globally in the last five years (no less). And although the United States Gemological Institute estimates that 70% of the diamonds sold today are round carving, the e-commerce website Ring concierge recently discovered that 30% of its customers requested oval diamonds.

Why is it that the oval shape in jewelry lately causes so much anger? This type of elongated carving, in its multiple versions, has actually existed for centuries. Seal rings, for example, used to take an oval shape in order to expand their surface so that the family shield could be more easily engraved. According to Joan Boening, President of the prestigious company of silver, porcelain and ancient jewels James Robinson, it was in the 18th century, in Georgian England, when this type of carving began to take place. Half a century later, Queen Victoria acquired the Koh-i-noor diamond from India. He had the huge 186-carat gem scrubbed to a 105-carat oval stone. In 1937, the diamond was placed on the crown for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, and today it is kept in the Tower of London.

It also had its heyday in the '50s. In 1957, Lazare Kaplan, a Russian diamond dealer based in New York, developed an oval carving that could be produced en masse. The new form contrasted with the glowing rings and straight lines of art deco, very popular in the 1920s and 1930s, and sold as churros ("Scher's tells you everything you need to know about the new oval size diamond," said a 1958 ad in a newspaper in Rochester, New York. Scheer, a former jewelry maker from the New York diamond district, continued: "everyone says he's more grateful and elegant than emerald carving".

El afamado Kaplan era proveedor de Tiffany & Co., Cartier y Van Cleef and Arpels. Muy pronto, la nueva forma figuraba en las vitrinas de todas las joyerías estadounidenses (muchos joyeros pregonaban que una de sus virtudes era parecer más grande que un diamante de talla redonda: "¡Los diamantes ovales parecen más grandes, pero cuestan menos!", decía un anuncio de 1958 en el Orlando Sentinel). A la muerte de Kaplan, se le atribuyó su origen moderno: "Con tales ofertas, era inevitable que el diamante de talla oval que él mismo desarrolló se hiciera popular", rezaba su obituario enThe New York Times.

In 1981, an oval stone engagement ring shone in the most famous hand of an entire generation: that of Princess Diana of Wales. Garrard jewelry in London set on white gold a 12-carat oval Sri Lankan sapphire and surrounded it with a diamond halo. Boening remembers how the demand for this kind of ring was triggered in the 1980s and 1990s: "Don't see how many people came looking for something similar to what Princess Diana was wearing," she says.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, interest in the oval ring decreased from its glory days in Lady Di's time. However, the emblematic ring returned to the centre of attention around the world when, in 2010, Prince William asked Kate Middleton to marry him. Boening tells that there was a similar peak: "we are all anglophiles to some extent", adventure. If we add that, shortly after, Ryan Reynolds asked for Blake lively's hand with a similar ring, along with many other famous frontlines who have aimed to look the same way, it is no wonder that everyone is fascinated with oval stones, and buys them accordingly.

Boening also points to the same determining factor proclaimed by jewelry stores in 1958: the oval is a very flattering form: "when a stone is carved in oval form, it covers more surface. So the stone looks bigger. " The United States Gemological Institute subscribes to it: "an oval diamond has a larger surface than a round diamond of equal caratation, so it may seem larger at first sight. The oval shape helps make the finger look longer. Moreover, in the absence of sharp angles and corners, oval diamonds are less likely to splinter compared to other sophisticated sizes. " In conclusion, the perfect tandem: functionality (in the most glamorous sense of the term) and trend.

We leave you with a selection, very last, of rings with oval stone.

This article was originally published on Vogue.com