By
Ashley Bailey, Wednesday, August 02, 2006 12:00 AM
Super ideal cuts are no longer just round.
One of the hippest new cuts of the last decade has gone square. Thanks to the galloping popularity of the Princess Cut (a square), at least three major companies have introduced hearts and arrows square cuts—branded, respectively, as the "Dream Cut," "Regent Cut," and the "Hope." More are on the way.
Here's why.
Super ideal cuts possess what is called "optical symmetry." That means that these stones make perfectly matched sets of hearts and arrows when looked at with special viewers such as the Idealscope. These patterns are not merely a trick of light. They are visual proof that the diamond is performing to its greatest potential.
High-performance diamonds boast unexcelled brilliance. But that's not all. They also boast unexcelled fire—large chunks of spectrum color seen in certain lighting environments, usually ones that feature high-contrast light sources.
Fire, which is one of the most lauded aesthetic features of diamond beauty, is rarely seen in modern diamond cuts because the pavilion facets most responsible for beefy flashes of fire are much shorter than they used to be. To produce fire, a diamond has to have perfectly aligned facets.
Super-ideal cuts have such precision. And now that they are available in squares, the industry will be able to sell fire in fancy as well as round cuts.
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