Engagement Rings For Men

Published on 27/07/09

This year, the jeweller H Samuel claims to have almost sold out of its “Tioro”, which is not, as you might suspect from the name, a chocolate bar or small car, but a titanium-and-diamond ring with blue stripes (how manly!) around the band. Such is its popularity that there are now six designs in the range.

And where the Asda of the jewellery world treads, more upmarket outlets tiptoe. Stephen Einhorm, a jeweller on Londoner’s fashionable Upper Street, has been making male engagement rings since 2004, crafting them out of 2,000-year-old wood and silver-and-titanium alloys for upwards of £1,000 a piece. “Men have grown more aware and confident of their style in those five years,” says Linda Jones from the jewellers. “The increase in uptake has been noticeable.”

Civil partnerships between men account for some of the sales (the fashion designer Marc Jacobs has proudly flashed a “mangagement” ring; although not of H Samuel provenance), but the phenomenon is increasingly taking hold among heterosexual couples. A female colleague who recently got engaged observed that “Two girls and one guy have asked me, with all seriousness, if he will be wearing an engagement ring, too, as if it were a normal thing these days.”