Frank Ocean insists it was an "easy decision" to use lab-grown diamonds for his Homer brand.
Frank Ocean founder Homer last year
The 35-year-old rapper felt it would not have been "in step with the times" to use mined stones in his high-end jewellery range and insisted there is no difference in clarity and colour between the two types of rock.
He said: "This was an easy decision.
“There are few jewellers who look like me. There are few black jewellers in the space of fine jewellery, black family-owned jewellers.
"More than it being a point of difference it also would not have felt in step with the times to extract diamonds from the Earth and to include mined diamonds in our supply chain.
"Of course, the value of what we make is not entirely based on the materials we use, no more than this cell phone’s value is captured from adding up the cost of silicone and cobalt and glass etc.
"But man-made diamonds are in fact identical to mined diamonds, they are the same arrangement of carbon. Light moves through them at half speed, same as a mined diamond and our standards for clarity and colour are equal to the best in our business except we don’t have to clear forests and send people into the earth to find ours.”
The 'Thinkin' Bout You' singer has opened a Homer store in Manhattan, surrounded by traditional watch and jewellery repair workshops and other specialist retailers and Frank thinks people benefit from visiting the shop, rather than just browsing online.
He told The Week: “In store, you understand the scale, the weight.
“We’ve noticed people coming into the store knowing exactly what they want from seeing it online but they come to see it in person anyway.”
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