I started Lapidelle, a play on "lapidary," the centuries-old art of cutting and polishing gemstones, because I couldn't find a ring I wanted to buy.

I was looking for an emerald ring for my mom's birthday. Nothing crazy; I wanted a 2-carat simple cut. After realizing every natural stone in the quality I wanted was way out of budget, I turned to lab-grown, but almost everything I found looked wrong: too much gold, weird settings, stones sitting sideways (when they should've been standing up). My mom and I share the same pull toward anything bright and bold, color over plain diamonds; so I kept looking and kept coming up empty, and at some point I stopped thinking "I can't find this" and started thinking "nobody's making this."

Lab-grown diamonds went from 12% of U.S. engagement rings in 2019 to 61% in 2025, according to The Knot's Real Weddings Study, the majority of couples now. And it's not just diamonds. In that same study, sapphires and moissanite came out as the two most popular non-diamond center stones, which told me color wasn't a compromise people were settling for; it's what they actually wanted, once someone gave them a good version of it. More recently, fashion has been moving in the same direction: demand for color-blocking alone jumped 28% between June 2024 and September 2025, as the industry pulled away from years of quiet, neutral minimalism toward bolder color.

Since I was a kid, I've been drawn to Art Deco. I've had a print of Tamara de Lempicka's Self-Portrait (Tamara in a Green Bugatti) hanging in my room; I love the sharp, confident geometry, and I try to translate that same language into my ring designs: clean lines, an emphasis on strong angles.

I earned my CAD and colored gemstone certification through GIA in summer 2026, and I'm currently working toward my associate's in Jewelry Science at Austin Community College, expected May 2028. Every design in the collection is original, sketched by me first, then developed with CAD partners in Sydney, Australia, and produced with lab-grown gemstone manufacturers in China. From there, every piece is shipped to Los Angeles to get independently lab-grown certified through IGS. Every ring design goes through at least three prototypes before it's released.

I hope you enjoy this passion project of mine, I’m very excited to share it, and I hope you love it as much as I do!

— Cecilia