The New Appeal of Men’s Jewelry

By Kathleen Beckett for THE NEW YORK TIMES

If you think you have been seeing more men wearing rings, bracelets and pendants — like Jay-Z, John Mayer or Hiroshi Fujiwara, known as the Godfather of Tokyo’s trendy Harajuku area — you’re not wrong.

The trend, which began several years ago along with the birth of men’s wear fashion weeks, has firmly taken hold around the globe. (The men’s weeks, however, haven’t enjoyed quite as much success.)

Some industry figures say Instagram has had a lot to do with the appeal.

Men today “don’t look at fashion magazines, but they look at Instagram,” said Cynthia Sakai, a Japanese jeweler who designs her Vita Fede line in New York, has it made in Italy, and sells it around the world in fashion-forward stores like Harvey Nichols and Lane Crawford. She is introducing a men’s line this fall. “Guys do style posts on Instagram, they do selfies and tell their friends what they’re wearing. Instagram and Snapchat changed the game.”

If you think you have been seeing more men wearing rings, bracelets and pendants — like Jay-Z, John Mayer or Hiroshi Fujiwara, known as the Godfather of Tokyo’s trendy Harajuku area — you’re not wrong. The trend, which began several years ago along with the birth of men’s wear fashion weeks, has firmly taken hold around the globe. (The men’s weeks, however, haven’t enjoyed quite as much success.) Some industry figures say Instagram has had a lot to do with the appeal. Men today “don’t look at fashion magazines, but they look at Instagram,” said Cynthia Sakai, a Japanese jeweler who designs her Vita Fede line in New York, has it made in Italy, and sells it around the world in fashion-forward stores like Harvey Nichols and Lane Crawford. She is introducing a men’s line this fall. “Guys do style posts on Instagram, they do selfies and tell their friends what they’re wearing. Instagram and Snapchat changed the game.”

But it makes sense that social media has that kind of impact as the market research company NPD Group reported that, in the United States anyway, “Millennials are driving men’s jewelry sales, generating half of the growth, followed by Gen Z and Gen X.”

Global sales of men’s luxury fine jewelry reached $5.3 billion in 2017, up from $4.3 billion in 2012, an increase of 22 percent, according to Euromonitor International, a market research company. That may not seem like much when compared with the $31.9 billion sales in the women’s sector in 2017 — but the men’s growth has been steady.

Rings are the hot men’s item around the world, with NPD Group noting that, in the United States, they “generate one-third of the men’s jewelry sales and almost two-thirds of the industry growth. Necklaces/chains are the No. 2 category, generating one-quarter of sales.”

The New Appeal of Men’s Jewelry

 

 

STYLE BLOG