Ice, rocks or bling, the slang words for jewellery is anything but subtle, and jewellery too is getting bigger and flashier. Celebrities are sporting larger and larger diamonds when they get engaged, hip hop artists have chains as thick as rope and even costume jewellery is trending toward larger, more eye-catching styles.
It makes sense: if you spend a lot of money on an item, you want people to notice it. Still, there are some great jewellery websites that keep the design simple, so they can let the rocks do the talking.
Adler
This site features an animation of a woman holding up a bracelet, letting it flap in the wind like a beach towel. The muted colours of the sand and sky keep the emphasis on the brand and its gorgeous creation.
Leviev
This site takes a bright colour – in this case, the pink of a flower – and uses it as the basis of monochromatic palette that still doesn’t overshadow the big diamond in the middle of the petals.
Van Cleef and Arpels
This site uses a soft palette of colours: one that is so soft, it is a little hard to read the text sometimes. This allows the bright stones of the jewellery, as well as the detailed workmanship, to really stand out.
Kirsten Hendrich
This UK-based start-up business by Kirsten Hendrich has an eye-catching minimalist logo design on a Crisp chic background. These two design elements reflect the style and concept of her jewellery.
Harry Winston
Harry Winston is one of the iconic bridal jewellery designers. The site uses blushes and creams to set the tone, and use an almost silhouetted model to set the jewellery off.
De Beers
De Beers takes an approach similar to Leviev, but with a more traditional colour. The navy of the site brings out the blue tone of the diamonds, making them look even bolder and brighter.
Mikimoto
Mikimoto developed the first cultured pearls and pretty much established the pearl industry. They let their pedigree and skill do the talking, showing a simple string of pearls against a blue background.
Chanel Fine Jewellery
The Chanel jewellery website does very little to show off the jewellery on its homepage. Instead, it cycles through a set of images showing glamorous women looking beautiful in artistic images. It makes the site feel less like an e-commerce site and more like a gallery.
Brandon Knaster Jewelry
This site is about as simple as one can be. It doesn’t even spell out the full name of the designer. It just has huge, high-quality images of the rings, earrings and bracelets against a black background.
David Fowkes
This site is similarly simple. It goes a step further by not even showing the final product and instead showing various images of stones arranged in tableaux that are reminiscent of Stonehenge and other prehistoric monuments.
Tiffany & Co
Tiffany & Co are masters of understated elegance, having pioneered the use of a single colour so masterfully that everyone instantly recognises it as ‘Tiffany blue’. They let their signature shade take centre stage on this site, having even the cuff take a back seat to the colour.
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