Ever since her acclaimed role in the movie ‘Gentlemen Prefer Blondes,’ Marilyn Monroe has frequently been associated with the phrase ‘Diamonds are a girl’s best friend’. This seems to be the case for most celebrities walking the red carpet at various award ceremonies, which begs the question: Are diamonds a celebrity’s best friend?

A lot of us watch academy award shows just so we can see which celeb wears what designer gown, which shoes, what kind of make-up etc. A prominent element in celeb’s red carpet apparel is diamond and precious gemstone jewelry. Notoriously, celebs never wear anything twice, then how can they afford all that expensive-looking jewelry?

Although celebrities are blessed with hefty salaries and are perfectly capable of buying their own red carpet diamond jewelry, a celebrity would prefer to borrow jewelry because purchasing different pieces of jewelry for different occasions is not exactly frugal. In addition, jewelry lines and designers gladly lend out their diamonds to celebrities, since they are walking, talking advertisements. The jewelry will inevitably be photographed, critiqued and admired by hundreds of thousands. Therefore, borrowing out jewelry to celebrities is just another way of increasing the jeweler’s business proceeds.

The tradition of wearing borrowed diamonds originated in 1944 when Jennifer Jones wore borrowed Harry Winston diamond pieces at the Oscars. Some of the designers most famous for lending out their jewels are Michael Katz, a well-renowned Beverly Hills jewelry designer, sought-after due to his ability of matching jewelry to apparel. Fred Leighton is another diamond jewelry designer who lends out his diamonds to a variety of celebrity functions, TV shows and movies.