Lark & Berry: Lab-grown diamond pioneer

Laura Chavez grew up in the 1980s and came to fine jewellery from a background in business rather than design - which may be exactly why she was able to see an opportunity that the established industry had missed. When she discovered lab-grown diamonds in London, she recognised immediately that they offered everything mined diamonds did, without the environmental destruction and ethical uncertainty. In 2018, she founded Lark & Berry and committed entirely to lab-grown stones — a position that drew pushback from established industry names at the time, and that has since been vindicated as the category has moved into the mainstream. The brand's founding conviction has never shifted: that fine jewellery should be breathtakingly beautiful and unimpeachably responsible, and that these are not competing demands.