When Taylor Swift announced her engagement to Travis Kelce on August 26, 2025, the ring in her photographs held a natural diamond of about 10 carats that the Natural Diamond Council described as an antique elongated cushion cut. The stone sat on a hand-engraved yellow gold band. Reports credited the design to Kelce, who worked with an independent jewelry designer.
Archival Dressing on the Red Carpet
The ring arrived after several seasons in which archival clothing had become standard on major red carpets. At the 2024 Met Gala, Kendall Jenner wore a 1999 Givenchy look and Emily Ratajkowski wore a Versace haute couture dress from 2001. Zendaya attended the London premiere of the second Dune film in a 1995 Mugler robot suit, an appearance that WWD calculated was worth $152 million in media impact value for the house. Mugler keeps more than 6,000 pieces in an archive in central France and has said that loan requests increased after earlier vintage appearances by Cardi B and Kylie Jenner.
Consumer spending follows the same pattern at lower price points. A record 58% of US consumers bought secondhand apparel in 2024, up 6 percentage points from 2023, according to an annual resale report released in March 2025. The same report found that 48% of younger shoppers treat secondhand as the first place they look for clothing, and it projected that the US secondhand apparel market would reach $74 billion by 2029. Engagement rings sit at the expensive end of that same interest in older design.
Period Lineage of Elongated Diamond Shapes
Elongated shapes have a long record in period jewelry. The marquise dates to 18th-century France, where legend links it to Louis XV and the lips of Madame de Pompadour, and it appeared often in Art Deco pieces before returning in larger sizes during the 1970s and 1980s.
A buyer drawn to period styling typically compares a marquise diamond ring against a pear in a cluster setting, an elongated antique cushion, or an emerald cut in an Art Deco mount. In a 2025 survey of US couples, marquise, pear and emerald cuts each made up 8% of center stones.
Old Cuts and the Modern Brilliant
Genuine old mine, old European and rose cut diamonds were faceted by hand and set into jewelry between the 1700s and the 1930s. The round brilliant that later replaced them took its standard proportions from calculations Marcel Tolkowsky published in 1919. Cutters who work with both types point to differences in depth, crown angles, table size, culet size and facet size, and those differences account for the distinct look of an old cut placed beside a modern one.
Supply limits access to genuine period stones. Dealers report that genuine antique diamonds are hard to source, frequently asymmetrical and often marked by visible irregularities, and one California dealer said that a period stone of 10 carats would be extremely rare. Most couples who want the look commission a newly cut stone in old proportions instead. A February 2025 New York Times report described a growing number of brides turning away from stones with intense sparkle.
Survey Figures on Shape, Metal and Spend
The same 2025 survey of more than 10,000 US couples gives a measured view of how far these preferences reach. Lab-grown stones made up 61% of center stones, the average spend fell to $4,600 from $5,200 in 2024, and the average size rose to 1.9 carats. Round diamonds accounted for 26% of center stones and ovals for 25%, so round stones still lead by a narrow margin.
Metal choice links more directly to period taste. In trade coverage of engagement ring trends for 2026, yellow gold was the top single metal choice at 39%. Its share has more than doubled in 5 years, so the engraved yellow gold band on Swift’s ring follows an established buying pattern. The survey files old mine and elongated cushion stones under a single cushion category, which held 6%.
Platform data from before the Swift engagement show the same interest. A 2023 analysis of more than 8,000 Pinterest boards ranked vintage rings, meaning pieces 20 to 100 years old, first with 63,830 pins, while antique rings over 100 years old placed third with 45,330.
Auction Records and Marquise Provenance
The marquise has a long record at auction. On the second day of the 1996 sale of the estate of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, the 40-carat marquise engagement ring that Aristotle Onassis gave her sold for $2.58 million, more than 4 times its top estimate of $600,000. In 2023 Sotheby’s sold a ring set with a 21.03-carat Type IIa marquise for more than $2 million.
Celebrity rings keep the shape in view. Selena Gomez announced her engagement to Benny Blanco in December 2024 with a marquise of about 6 carats on an eternity setting, valued by one industry estimate at roughly $225,000. The same estimate put marquise diamonds at fewer than 5% of all diamonds, so one public example is enough to draw attention to the cut.
Art Deco at One Hundred
The Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris marked 100 years since the 1925 International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts with a major centenary exhibition that ran from October 22, 2025 to April 26, 2026 and placed period jewelry, including brooches by Raymond Templier and Jean Després, within its account of the style.
A couple choosing a ring in this style faces a defined set of options. A genuine old mine or old European stone offers documented age and hand-cut irregularity, and supply limits its size and symmetry. A newly cut stone in old proportions offers the same profile at a larger size and a lower cost per carat, particularly in lab-grown material. The decision comes down to how much a buyer values the age of the stone against the look of the finished ring. Each couple has to settle that before the jeweler begins work.
