Yesterday, we went down to the Diamonique pop up shop in Hatton Garden (i.e. THE home of jewellery) and spotted lots of shiny, sparkly things that got us quite excited. 

QVC celebrated the launch of three fabulous Diamonique collections: designer, celebration and essential – each one beautiful in its own way. Diamonique aims to bring intricate, elaborate pieces to the public at a fraction of the cost of their diamond equivalents. For the pop up shop only (and sadly, not for sale) they even created the heart of the ocean necklace from Titanic and the ruby and diamond necklace from Pretty Woman (above) to prove that they looked equally as sparkly and captivating as the originals. Which they did.

So, is Diamonique the new diamond? Well no, but it’s a pretty good wallet-friendlier substitute for those that want one. To prove their point, the Diamonique folk have been conducting a little survey for the past few weeks, which involved asking the public to identify the real from the fake.

We took part yesterday too and although we pride ourselves on being able to recognise a real diamond when we see it and passed the test, we can confirm that the two rings we were asked to analyse were almost identical, especially in terms of the all-important sparkle factor. We therefore completely understand why over 60% of women and over 70% of men couldn’t tell the difference. Would you be able to pass the test? 

We’ve put together a gallery of some of our favourite pieces, although we have to admit that the whole collection is pretty impressive.

[nggallery id=93]