Given Jackie Kennedy’s style icon status, it’s no surprise that Jackie Kennedy’s dazzling engagement ring has inspired countless brides over the years up. French jeweler Van Cleef & Arpels’ toi et moi design includes a 2.84 carat diamond and a 2. – Carat emeralds, all emerald-cut, set in a band of baguette-cut emeralds and diamonds.
Toi et moi — which translates to “you and me” and features two gemstones placed side by side — has seen a recent surge in popularity, with Ariana Grande, Kay The likes of Kylie Jenner and Megan Fox have adopted romantic designs. But the style actually dates back centuries, when Napoleon Bonaparte proposed to Josephine de Beauharnais with a 40.
Quite unusually, when the couple first announced their engagement in 1996 Jackie was not photographed wearing a wearing a ring. According to writer Jay Mulvaney, she told reporters at the time: “I haven’t. Jack and I have seen dozens. Some I don’t like, some just don’t fit.”
Jackie Kennedy dazzles JFK’s engagement ring has a 2.84 Carats of diamonds and a 2. 84 – carat emerald set in a toi et moi design.
Boston Globe/Getty Images
In the end, it was her future father-in-law, Joseph Kennedy, who picked out the ring from Van Cleef & Arpels Fifth Avenue boutique in New York. Vanity Fair1996 Edward Klein describes how jeweler Louis Arpels’ wife, Hélène, helped the former ambassador to the UK choose the now famous engagement ring.
Not afraid to make her mark on the design, the First Lady actually redesigned the piece nearly a decade after their marriage, with sparkler marquise cut diamonds Instead of baguette diamonds, from tapered to round-cut diamonds on the side. “This new ring demonstrates Jackie’s growing confidence both personally and in her family’s role on the world stage,” BritishVogue Jewelry director Rachel Garrahan talks about the updated design.
Of course, the toi et moi ring isn’t Jackie’s only influential creation. On her subsequent engagement to Aristotle Onassis, the shipping tycoon gifted her a Harry Winston 40 carat Lesotho III diamond ring that sold at auction for $2.6 million 1996. Meanwhile, it was what Kennedy called his “swimming ring” that inspired daughter-in-law Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy’s diamond and sapphire engagement ring.
199619961996
