The 2026 Reset: High Jewellery After the Era of Quiet Luxury

Luxury is slowing. Jewellery is not. As 2025 comes to a close, the world of high jewellery — long presumed stable, linear, and sheltered by tradition — is in the midst of a profound reset. The cultural codes that once structured the sector (scarcity, lineage, brand authority, Parisian salon mythology) no longer suffice. In their place emerges a new triad: ethics, colour and story — backed by data, driven by younger wealth, and amplified by digital experience.

The end of 2025 makes this clear: high jewellery is no longer a satellite to the luxury world - it is the model. While other luxury subsectors slow or contract, the high jewellery market is expanding, mutating, hybridizing, and rethinking the very idea of value.

Welcome to the 2026 reset.

The Post-Quiet-Luxury Moment: Defiance Worn as Ornament

A single shift underpins the current market: luxury is no longer about discretion, but direction. The so-called “quiet luxury” that dominated post-pandemic taste (subtle, tonal, minimal, wealth disguised as restraint) is exhausted. In its place we find jewellery recoded as declaration. Paris, Geneva and New York are responding: bolder proportions, wilder cuts, narrative-driven stones, recycled and traceable metal, ultra-rare gems that embody choice rather than status.

This is no longer the jewellery of inheritance. It is the jewellery of agency.

The rising cohort of next-gen collectors — especially in Asia, North America and the Gulf — are not interested in symbols alone. They want alliance: between gem and ethics, between design and daring, between provenance and power.

High jewellery has ceased to be a museum of the past. It has become a theatre of decision.

The 2025 Data: When Jewellery Outruns Luxury

Even with geopolitical tension, luxury stumbles — but high jewellery surges. The most recent market indicators show:

The global high jewellery sector is projected to reach $180.8B USD by end of 2025, with continued CAGR growth through 2035.

Meanwhile, the broader luxury market is flattening: projected to grow only 1–3% per year until 2027.

Richemont’s jewellery division (Cartier, Van Cleef & Arpels) posted double-digit growth in Q3 2025, even as fashion and watches underperformed.

Younger ultra-wealthy buyers (UHNWI under 45) now account for over 30% of new acquisitions in high jewellery, with demand especially high in China, Singapore, Dubai, Toronto and Sydney.

In short: when luxury loses momentum, rarity, ethics and narrative gain it.

The slowdown of mass luxury is not a crisis. It is a filter. What survives it is not what was prettiest — but what was truest.

The Ethics of Rarity: Traceability as a New Luxury Code

2025 was the year in which ethics stopped being a marketing accessory and became a market driver. The rise of recycled gold, gem-traceability technology, blockchain-linked provenance and conflict-free sourcing has permanently reshaped the buyer mindset. Not because everyone cares — but because the buyers willing to spend six to seven figures per piece overwhelmingly do.

By Q4 2025:

41% of major jewellery brands now use recycled metals in at least part of their collections.

32% publicly commit to traceable sourcing systems.

Ethical provenance is now cited by more than half of millennial high-value buyers as a deciding purchase factor.

The message is simple: the future of luxury is conscience, not concealment.

And this matters for brands like the Lisbon Gem Exchange: coloured stones like Afghan tourmalines, when sold with transparency — even without formal certificates — gain value not despite the rawness of their origin but because of it. In the ethics economy, information is the luxury.

Design Disruption: Colour, Craft, and the Return of Organic Volume

The end of 2025 reveals unmistakable design signals at the top end of the sector:

The return of maximalist colour: lagoon, mint, peony, sea-foam, bi-colour and neon tourmalines lead auctions and appointments.

Gold is back: especially bold, sculptural yellow gold with brushed, molten or organic finishes.

Stone-first pieces: where the gemstone defines the architecture of the jewellery, not the other way around.

High-craft meets high-tech: AI-assisted stone mapping, 3D-printed wax prototypes, VR showroom previews.

At JCK Las Vegas 2025, the trend was already clear. By December 2025, it is non-negotiable: the future of high jewellery is not subtle — it is sovereign.

Colour no longer supports design. Colour leads design.

The Hybrid Salon: Where Digital is Not a Replacement - But a Demand

The collector of 2026 will expect two simultaneous worlds:

The embodied world of the atelier — where weight, light, and cut can be held in the hand.

The dematerialised world of the screen — where the same gem can be examined, rotated, magnified, compared, booked, reserved, paid for, shipped.

Brands that treat digital as a substitute for physical will fail. The winners are the ones who treat digital as the front room of desire.

For a gem-dealer operating globally (like the Lisbon Gem Exchange), this means:

No more low-res gem photography.

4K video and 3D scans must be standard for stones above 5 carats.

Private online consultations must be as intimate as a velvet box in a Mayfair salon.

Provenance must be delivered through narrative, not paperwork alone.

Jewellery is not de-materialising. It is double-materialising — in hand and on screen. The clients of 2026 will expect both, instantly.

What This Means for the Lisbon Gem Exchange

Afghan tourmalines are no longer fringe stones. They are the new frontier of connoisseur luxury: unheated, unstandardised, naturally coloured, full of variance and depth. They belong to the future of jewellery — not the past.

LGE has three natural competitive advantages in this 2026 reset:

Rarity and origin: Afghan tourmalines are mined in limited quantities, under artisanal conditions, in a region most brands fear to touch. That is leverage, not liability.

Narrative capital: Story is no longer secondary to gem quality — it is part of quality. LGE can no longer say “we sell stones.” It must say “we sell stones and the world they come from.”

Sovereign positioning: Not tied to a legacy maison, not bound by legacy trade models, not trapped in white-diamond orthodoxy, LGE can go where corporate houses cannot: bicolour, lagoon, mint, cushion-cut, unheated, unenhanced, unstoried until we write the story.

Which means: LGE is not just a dealer. It is now in a position to become a custodian of gem narratives - and the luxury market of 2026 is hungry for that role.

The Value Thesis of 2026: Jewellery as Resistance, Jewellery as Identity

In the decade ahead, jewellery will no longer be purchased for beauty alone. It will be purchased for meaning. For what it resists: homogenisation, disposability, engineered scarcity, empty luxury signals. The pieces that will matter most will not be the ones that match the outfit - but the ones that outlive it.

Which is why the final truth of this reset is the one most easily missed:

Jewellery is no longer about “who you are”. It is about what you refuse to be.

And in a market of sameness, the rare, the risky, the ethically anchored, the boldly coloured and the narratively true will not just survive - they will define the age.

High jewellery is entering 2026 not as a refuge of old money, but as a field of new meaning.

If you understand this, you're not just in the market.
You're already ahead of it.