Searches for marquise stones climbed roughly 340% after Selena Gomez announced her engagement in December 2024, and the shape still accounts for about 8% of US engagement rings. Both figures are accurate at the same time. The marquise is the fastest-growing fancy shape by percentage and one of the smallest categories by volume, which is the usual profile of a revival in its early years.
That gap between attention and purchase also explains why so many people are looking at the shape for the first time without knowing much about how it behaves on a hand.
Eighteenth-Century Origins
The shape first appeared in Paris around 1745. The story attached to it is that Louis XV asked his court jeweler for a stone shaped like the smile of Madame de Pompadour, and the result took the name of a rank sitting between a count and a duke. Jewelry historians treat the anecdote with some suspicion, since documentation from that period is thin.
The other name for the shape is more descriptive and probably older. Cutters call it a navette, French for little boat, because the two pointed ends and the swollen middle resemble a hull. French courtiers wore navette stones to signal rank, which is how the aristocratic association began.
Face-Up Size Per Carat
The practical argument for the shape is about size. A marquise has the largest face-up area per carat of any standard brilliant shape. A 1-carat marquise looks meaningfully wider across the finger than a 1-carat round, because the weight is spread into a long, shallow outline instead of packed into a deep cone.
That matters at a fixed budget. Buyers comparing shapes at the same price find the marquise gives visible size a round stone cannot at that weight. The elongation also lengthens the look of the finger, which is the reason ovals and marquises tend to appear on the same shortlist.
Fancy shapes also tend to price below rounds at the same weight and grade. A round wastes more of the rough during cutting and attracts the steadiest demand, and both of those factors are in the price. Buyers who move from a round to a marquise usually find they can hold their budget and move up in weight, or hold the weight and move up a color or clarity grade. The second option is the one most people underuse.
Proportion and the Length-to-Width Ratio
Ratio determines how the finished stone looks. Most cutters and buyers settle between 1.85 and 2.10, meaning the stone is close to twice as long as it is wide. Below 1.80 the outline looks stubby and the points lose their definition. Above 2.15 the stone starts to look thin and the center can appear starved of light.
Anyone shopping for a marquise engagement ring should ask for that ratio in writing before comparing stones, since two stones of identical carat weight can look like different shapes entirely. The same request works for ovals and pears, where the range is different but the principle holds. Symmetry deserves the same attention. The two points must line up on a single axis, and the shoulders must curve identically, or the stone will look crooked once it is set and stay that way.
The Bowtie Problem
Every elongated brilliant has a bowtie, which is a dark band across the center of the stone where light escapes through the bottom of the stone instead of coming back up. The marquise shows it more than most shapes because of its length. A faint bowtie is normal and adds contrast. A heavy black one is a cutting fault and does not disappear under better lighting.
Grading reports do not score the bowtie. No certificate has a line for it, which means the only reliable check is looking at the stone, or at a video of the stone, face up and in motion. A seller who cannot supply that video for a specific stone is asking for a decision that cannot be made on paper. Watch it in ordinary room light if possible. Jewelry-case spotlights flood the stone from above and hide the effect, which is why a stone can look flawless at a counter and dull in an office.
Settings for Pointed Stones
The two points are the weakness. They are the thinnest part of the stone and the most likely place for a chip, so the setting has to protect them. V-shaped prongs wrap each end and cover the tip completely, and most jewelers treat them as standard for this shape rather than an upgrade.
East-west settings have done a lot to revive the shape. Turning the stone sideways across the finger removes the elongating effect and produces something closer to a modern bar. The result looks current, which is the main reason younger buyers have taken to it. The most photographed example right now is the 6-carat stone Selena Gomez has worn since her engagement, set on a yellow gold pave band with no halo around it, which is what most new marquise settings do. Bezels do similar work by hiding the points inside a metal rim. Those settings also solve the snagging complaint, since a north-south marquise on a tall basket catches on fabric more than a round stone does.
Sources of the Current Demand
Several things arrived at once. Lab-grown supply lowered the entry price for a large stone, and size is where the marquise argument is strongest. A buyer who could afford 1 carat in a natural stone can look at 2 or 3 in a grown one, and at that weight the width across the finger is what the buyer is paying for.
Metal prices pushed in the same direction. Gold surged past $5,100 an ounce in January 2026, which raised the cost of every setting and made width per carat a more useful thing to buy.
Gen Z and millennial buyers have also moved off the default round solitaire, and jewelers describing that group name emerald and marquise outlines specifically. Antique and estate buying has grown alongside it, and the marquise is heavily represented in stock from the 1970s and 1980s, when the shape was last in wide circulation. Estate stones from that period are often cut deep to hold weight, so they measure smaller face up than their paperwork suggests.
None of that guarantees a long run. The shape had a similar moment in the late 1970s and then spent 30 years as a stone people inherited rather than chose. The cutting is different now. Modern marquise stones are cut for light return rather than for weight retention, so the bowties are smaller and the outlines are cleaner than the ones sitting in most family jewelry boxes.
The Shape in Plain Terms
A marquise is a long brilliant with two points and a curved middle, cut to a ratio near 2 to 1, prone to a bowtie, and larger to the eye than its weight suggests. Symmetry deserves a careful look, and the setting has to guard the tips. It is not difficult to buy well, and the checks involved take about 5 minutes per stone. Anyone who likes the outline should ask for the ratio, the video, and the symmetry grade, then decide from those three things rather than from the shape’s history.
