Experimental Ukrainian jewellery brand Nomis only uses laboratory-grown diamonds. Whether they’re scattered along pencil-length pins designed to skewer the earlobe, or clustered on “EarOvals” that encircle the ear and rest snug against the skull, all the diamonds in Nomis’s jewels are man-made. “We use lab-grown diamonds because it’s the logical choice,” says founder and creative director Alyona Kiperman.

In 2015, after her return from London, investment banker Pooja Sheth was scouting for an opportunity to start her entrepreneurial journey in India when a meeting with Bakul Limbasiya, a leading manufacturer of lab-grown diamonds, provided her with a direction and purpose.

Since the first Earth Day a half-century ago, large industries have grown from the widespread conviction that “natural” foods, fibers, cosmetics and other products are better for people and the planet. It’s an attitude that dates back to the 18th- and 19th-century Romantics, who rejected industrialism in favor of sublime landscapes and rural nostalgia: What’s given is good; what’s made is suspicious, especially if it’s of recent origin.

Lab growns withstood the mined diamond interest’s attempt to delegitimize the category to being recognized as real as anything that comes out of the ground. And because carat-for-carat they are priced about 30% below mined diamonds, consumers are driving demand for this new precious stone.