‘The Jewelry District’ Podcast: Trends and Takeaways From the 2025 JCK Show

By Natalie Chomet | July 02, 2025

In this week’s episode, JCK editor-in-chief Victoria Gomelsky and news director Rob Bates share their thoughts and observations from JCK 2025. They discuss the overall mood (upbeat), style trends (bold gold!), and their favorite highlights (the people!) of the annual show in Las Vegas. Victoria offers takeaways from a panel on the preowned watch market, and Rob has insights on the diamond industry from his interview with Botswana president Duma Boko, the De Beers breakfast, and a World Federation of Diamond Bourses event he attended shortly after the JCK show.

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Sponsor: Jewelers Mutual (jewelersmutual.com/solutions)

Show Notes
02:00 The mood at JCK
03:29 Going for gold
05:10 Favorite moments
09:20 Watch this space
12:15 Trends spotted
18:25 Diamond industry updates
21:45 A milestone: 150 episodes!

Episode Credits
Hosts: Rob Bates and Victoria Gomelsky
Producer and engineer: Natalie Chomet
Editor: Riley McCaskill
Plugs: @jckmagazine; jewelersmutual.com/solutions

Show Recap

The mood at JCK
The show floor at JCK Las Vegas was crowded and bustling as usual, and the overall mood was upbeat. “I think part of that was relief,” Rob says. “But I think part of it was, retail has held up despite all the craziness in the world.” Though tariffs have cast a cloud of unease over the industry, Victoria says the executives she spoke to didn’t focus on them. The attitude was to stay the course and not pass those costs on. “There was much less hubbub about [tariffs] than I thought there would be,” she remarks.

Going for gold
A big topic of conversation on the show floor was gold. “Gold is the new flex,” says Victoria. Diamonds used to be the key component of statement jewelry, but with the advent of lab-grown, a larger stone isn’t what it used to be.

Jewelers are leaning into gold to a surprising degree. Where Victoria expected to see jewelers using alternative metals or 14k styles, she instead saw many 18k pieces. “It does feel like a resiliency that this industry and this business has that I don’t know that people would have expected,” she says. “It’s heartening.”

Favorite moments
What were some of the highlights of JCK 2025? For Victoria, one was a dinner hosted by Single Mine Origin. The U.K. company traces its gold back to the mines, providing a transparency that allows consumers and designers to see where their gold comes from. The dinner brought a variety of designers together, and Victoria got to meet some top talent. She values the opportunities at JCK like this to connect with creative people.

Rob’s highlights were the many people he got to speak with when the Natural Diamond Council took over a restaurant and some interesting seminars he attended. He went to a presentation on “Angola’s Diamond Potential,” which talked up the ethics and charitable impact of Angola’s mines. The country has been troubled, but officials clearly want to put their best foot forward so it can join the ranks of nations with respected diamond industries, Rob says.

Watch this space
Victoria moderated a panel on the pre-owned watch business with Elizabeth Smith, managing director of Oliver Smith Jeweler (who covered the retail aspect of preowned watches), and Charles Tian, founder of WatchCharts, which specializes in data on the used timepiece market.

The two panelists agreed that the secondhand watch business has changed since the high of 2022. It’s now a buyer’s market, as opposed to being a seller’s market three years ago. There has been a surge in secondary market sales in anticipation of tariffs, Victoria says. Overall, though, she views it as a more sustainable business than it was at its zenith.

Trends spotted
Victoria saw lots of new bold yellow gold collections. She noticed ’80s-inspired collar necklaces in a hard-bangle style, some torqued. She also saw cuff bracelets and bigger bangles. There were fewer chains and more rigid forms compared with past years. And there were large gold medallions, often with stones set in them.

The Year of the Snake was alive and well on the show floor, along with many winged forms including butterflies, birds, and dragonflies. As far as other insect motifs, the Victorian-esque insect jewelry boom of past years has begun to recede, Vic observed.

She also noted the emergence of some interesting titanium styles. Though it’s not quite a trend just yet, titanium was used in a few creative titanium collections that Victoria found striking.

Vic says a pandemic-era trend that has gathered steam is letter and word jewelry. Stuller has introduced lab-grown diamonds in the shape of individual letters. The small letters, sold as loose gems, were relatively inexpensive and priced by weight. The letters are an easy sell, she thinks, because they’re a perfect gift. “If you’re wandering into a jewelry store and can’t find a gift for somebody, you can’t go wrong with the initials,” she says.

Diamond industry updates
Right after JCK, the World Federation of Diamond Bourses (WFDB) held its annual presidents’ meeting in New York City. Rob was the moderator for the two-day event. He says it was a successful conference, with many high-level attendees, including factions from Angola and Botswana.

In addition to moderating panels, Rob interviewed Botswana’s president Duma Boko at the WFDB meeting. Compared with his predecessor, Mokgweetsi Masisi, whom Rob has also interviewed, Boko is not as much of a “big personality” but more “wonky”—serious and earnest—and he stuck to the script, discussing what diamonds mean for Botswana, and how the country’s been hurt by lab-grown.

The diamond trade is in a state of flux, and is trying turn things around. Rob attended the De Beers breakfast at JCK, where CEO Al Cook spoke about a new brand and a new beacon the company is introducing this year, part of an ambitious effort to drive natural diamond demand. But the lab-grown sector also has its issues—at the show, Rob saw people selling lab-growns for as low as $50 a carat.

A milestone: 150 episodes!
The Jewelry District podcast, which began in January 2019, has reached its 150th episode. Rob reflects that they’ve interviewed, among other guests, two CEOs each from De Beers and Signet and the CEO of Pandora, as well as many talented designers and other movers and shakers. The hosts take a moment to recognize this milestone, thanking producer Natalie and their sponsors and listeners.

Any views expressed in this podcast do not reflect the opinion of JCK, its management, or its advertisers.