Before 2016 almost nobody in fashion or luxury was paying attention to lab-grown diamonds. The people selling them were US engagement-ring e-tailers, and they sold them on ethics and price. Three names matter for this decade, and each comes with a caveat that the brands themselves are fairly open about.
MiaDonna, 2005: the first retailer, with a simulant caveat
MiaDonna was founded in Portland, Oregon, in 2005 by Anna-Mieke Anderson, and describes itself as selling lab-grown since that year 1. JCK calls it "one of the first sites to sell lab-grown diamonds" 3.
The caveat is in MiaDonna's own material. In 2005 the technology to grow colourless diamonds in jewellery sizes and grades was still in its infancy, so the company's early product was a diamond-infused simulant, marketed as the Diamond Hybrid, which it still sells. MiaDonna says it "has worked exclusively with lab-grown diamonds since 2007" 2. So the honest dating is: lab-grown-focused retailer from 2005, genuine lab-grown diamonds exclusively from 2007.
It was, and remains, a bridal business: engagement rings, wedding bands and a charitable foundation funded from profits. That matters for the question this timeline keeps returning to. MiaDonna was first to build a retailer around the category, and it was not a designer or fashion house.
Brilliant Earth, 2012: the big e-tailer adds lab-grown
Brilliant Earth was founded in 2005 on a "beyond conflict free" mined-diamond standard. Its own guide says: "Since 2012, we've been among the first jewelers to offer lab-grown diamonds" 4. There is no contemporaneous 2012 press coverage this record has been able to locate, so the 2012 date rests on the brand's statement and is labelled as such.
Brilliant Earth never went lab-grown-only. Its significance in the timeline is as the first large, well-funded bridal retailer to legitimise lab-grown alongside mined, which is a different kind of first from MiaDonna's.
Ada Diamonds, 2015: the first lab-grown-only fine jeweller
Ada Diamonds was founded in 2015 in the San Francisco Bay Area by Jason Payne and Lindsay Reinsmith after they struggled to find a lab-grown engagement ring they liked. From the start it sold lab-grown diamonds only, as a concierge, made-to-order bridal service. In October 2017 it opened what its release called "the world's first luxury fine jewelry showroom exclusively dedicated to laboratory-created diamond jewelry", at 888 Brannan Street, the building that also houses Airbnb 5. CNBC profiled it in June 2018 6.
Ada is the strongest claimant to "first exclusively lab-grown fine jewellery brand", and that is why this record never uses that phrase for anyone else. It was also, by its own description, a bespoke bridal concierge, with most sales online; ready-to-wear fashion pieces were a later addition. The brand was sold to the New York manufacturer Sasha Primak in April 2025 after its founders' medical retirement 7.
The supply side: Diamond Foundry, November 2015
None of these retailers grew their own stones. The supply story changed on 11 November 2015 when Diamond Foundry launched publicly in San Francisco with Leonardo DiCaprio among its investors, producing CVD diamonds in one-to-two-carat polished sizes and selling through designers and wholesale 9. That launch is what made the designer capsules of 2016 and the conversion of Vrai & Oro possible; both have their own pages.
A note on 2017: Clean Origin
Clean Origin, founded in 2017 by third-generation diamantaire Alexander Weindling with Ryan Bonifacino and Terry Burman, is sometimes grouped with the pioneers. It belongs to the next wave: an online lab-grown-only engagement-ring business launched after Diamond Foundry and Ada had proved the category 8. It later added natural diamonds.
What this decade was, and was not
| Brand | Founded | Lab-grown from | Lab-grown only? | Positioning |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MiaDonna | 2005 | 2007 (simulant 2005–07) | Yes | Bridal e-tailer |
| Brilliant Earth | 2005 | 2012 | No | Bridal e-tailer |
| Ada Diamonds | 2015 | 2015 | Yes | Bespoke bridal concierge |
| Clean Origin | 2017 | 2017 | Yes at launch | Bridal e-tailer |
Every pioneer of this period was American, online and bridal. That is not a criticism; engagement rings were where the price argument was strongest. But it explains why, when designer and luxury brands arrived in 2016–18, they could fairly describe what they were doing as new. The question of who was first in that category is answered on the master page.