The duchess effect is very real. Items that Meghan Markle has loved and worn in public, especially since her marriage to Prince Harry, often sell out quickly and have huuuge waiting lists. According to Business Insider, that popularity has now extended to the engagement ring market—the trilogy ring style similar to the one that Prince Harry gave Meghan when they got engaged has now seen a "stratospheric rise" in popularity.
Prince Harry designed the original yellow-gold engagement ring himself, with the two smaller diamonds on the side from Princess Diana's collection and the larger center diamond from Botswana. Apparently, the trilogy style has now become one of the most popular ring styles. Nikolay Piriankov, founder of Taylor & Hart, which is a bespoke jeweler, told Business Insider:
Originally made popular with its wonderfully romantic sentiment of three stones representing the past, present, and future, trilogy engagement rings have been on a stratospheric rise in popularity since the engagement and the subsequent marriage of Meghan Markle to Prince Harry.
What made Harry's unique is that usually, all three stones are the same shape, but Harry branched out by making the center an "elongated cushion diamond" and giving it a modern spin. This has led others to create other "unique shape combinations" that stand out from older designs.
"Trilogy styles tend to have more presence on the finger because they use larger side diamonds that give off more sparkle, usually without small diamonds on the band," added Piriankov to BI.
Of course, Princess Kate and Princess Eugenie have inspired another style to become popular—the halo ring—with the modern addition of the center stone being a stone or color other than a diamond. So the duchess effect is still going strong for classic halos, too!
Here's Meghan's ring:
A close-up:
Here's Kate's:
And here's Eugenie's:
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