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GRAY'S DAY

The strongest color for fall is gray—heathered gray sweaters, tweedy gray suits, elegant charcoal tailoring. In past years, we would expect these muted tones to be paired with white gold. But this year, we expect instead warm gold and brown stones and mixtures of Tahitian pearls, both brown and gray. Gray is also a trend in gems.

COLORFUL COCKTAILS

The spring 2008 fashion shows in New York showed a lot of fresh colors that looked so delicious, we're betting women won't wait. The cheery citrus, soft sky blues, and lovely lilacs of this season's short cocktail dresses are irresistible for cocktail rings, too.

PINK TENDER

New York will briefly be the capital of the fancy colored diamond world early this month as Rio Tinto brings the cream of the year's crop of coveted fancy pink diamonds to town for a viewing before the annual tender. Rio Tinto's Argyle mine produces about 30 million carats of rough diamonds a year but only 8,000 to 10,000 carats of polished pinks. A mere 65 gems were selected for the tender. Spectacular purplish reds, as well as stunning deep pinks and a rare gray-violet diamond will be on display at the invitation-only event. Prices for these rare gems? Think hundreds of thousands per carat.

READY FOR ROUGH?

Pioneering designers like Todd Reed and Diamond in the Rough have been showing rough diamonds for years. And De Beers has done well with the Talisman collection also featuring rough. Nicole Kidman wore rough diamond bracelets by L'Wren Scott for William Goldberg to the Oscars. Now Neil Lane is adding his star power to rough diamond design. Retailers are telling us they may be ready to get rough. Will cutting-edge uncut style reach the mainstream?

MADISON MOVES

Jewelry brands are opening up flagship after flagship on New York's pricey Madison Avenue this fall. New to U.S. retail are Leviev, the second store of diamond and real estate magnate Lev Leviev, who opened in London last year, and Ivanka Trump, a joint venture with sightholder Dynamic Diamonds. (Trump will take the place of Dynamic's previous retail concept, Lockes Diamonds, which closed earlier this year.) Kwiat is coming soon. With all these newcomers locking up leases, will Stephen Webster and John Hardy be able to find a location when they decide to open New York stores with all that new buy-out capital?

THE RIGHT MONTH

If it's October, it must be right-hand ring month. The third annual event, sponsored by Jewelry.com and the Diamond Promotion Service, will be celebrated with on-line sweepstakes, a multi-page insert in Glamour magazine, and advertising and in-store promotions in major retailers like Gordon's, Helzberg, J.C. Penney, Kay, Macy's, Sears, and Zales. Last year, participating stores reported sales increases of 105 percent and 6.2 million people visited Jewelry.com.