These Unusual, Rare-Cut Diamond Engagement Rings Just Landed at Dover Street Market

Baylee Zwart’s engagement ring is Instagram-famous. In fact, if you’re a jewelry fan, there’s a good chance you’ve already seen it, whether you knew who it belonged to or not. The ring is relatively simple—gold band, solitaire diamond, bezel setting—but the diamond is shaped like, well, a diamond. It’s a pentagon, though the technical term is a “shield cut,” and it’s something you hardly ever see in the jewelry market. Zwart (who launched her fine jewelry line, Azlee, back in 2015) spent over a year looking for the diamond to create her engagement ring—and it makes such a graphic, uncluttered statement that she’s become synonymous with it, and gets DMs and emails about it daily.

If you’re in the market for something similar, you can work with Zwart to design a nearly identical ring—but shield cuts aren’t the only rare diamonds she works with. She’s built up an inventory of stunning, unusual diamonds (all sourced from private collectors, not diamond dealers) for custom orders, and starting this week, her new capsule of rare-cut engagement rings will debut at Dover Street Market New York—a first for both parties. “We’ve been selling our jewelry at DSM almost since the beginning, and when I mentioned doing a special engagement ring capsule for them, they were so excited,” Zwart tells Vogue. “They thought it was a huge opportunity because they don’t have any other designers addressing the engagement market. They were excited to engage with their customer in a way they hadn’t before, and to do it with rings that are nontraditional and interesting, but still timeless.”

The rings definitely look like something a DSM girl might be into—i.e., a girl who loves fashion, has an exacting eye, and likely doesn’t fantasize about gobstopper diamonds on Fifth Avenue. They’re modern and eye-catching, but still nod to tradition—they’re solitaire diamonds, after all—and are quite subtle on the hand, especially compared the multicolored diamonds, cluster rings, and the other “alternative engagement” options out there. The selection of Azlee rings you’ll find in DSM feature four types of diamonds: a shield cut (like Zwart’s), a hexagon diamond, a kite diamond, and a double-tipped shield diamond. You can buy one right off the floor (it would be sent to Zwart’s team in Los Angeles for sizing) or use it as an opportunity to try them all and work with Azlee and Dover Street Market on a custom style. “I chose four very different diamonds because I wanted to show just how much range there is with these rare-cut stones,” she explains. “Most people don’t realize these options even exist.”

The rings’ no-frills simplicity also belies the serious work that goes into them. Perhaps unsurprisingly, rare-cut diamonds aren’t easy to set: Each ring is built “from the ground up,” so even the setting is designed specifically around the diamond. “It takes a certain skill level to bezel-set these stones,” Zwart says. “Every single setting is one-of-a-kind—you can’t just take an existing one and make the stone fit.” Her rare-cut diamonds are also full-cut—meaning they have dozens of tiny facets—which are harder to source from collectors than rose-cut diamonds, which are less sparkly. “To find these full-cut diamonds with the radiance and shine and fire you want in an engagement ring . . . it’s a lot more challenging,” she says. “I honestly look all over the world.” Prices start at $5,900, and you can see them in person now at Dover Street Market in midtown.

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