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· 7 min read

Monica Rich Kosann: What It Makes and What It Doesn't

Monica Rich Kosann is known for lockets, charms and stackable rings, not bridal. Here is what the brand actually makes and how to plan a ring around it.

Monica Rich Kosann is an American fine jewellery house built around lockets, charms and small meaningful rings, not around bridal. Its own site organises the line as Lockets, The Locket Bar, Design Your Own, Gifts and Home Décor, and the ring collection is made up of stackables and symbolic styles rather than engagement settings. So if you arrived here while ring shopping, the useful question is not "which of their engagement rings is best" but "how do I build a ring that lives beside the pieces I already wear."

What the brand actually makes

Reading the collection pages rather than the marketing copy, the line breaks down like this:

  • Lockets. The signature category, in sterling silver and 18k gold, sized to hold photographs.
  • Charms and charm necklaces, sold as a build-your-own system.
  • Rings, which on their rings collection page are Poesy stackable bands, Points North, animal rings and Infinite & Boundless. As of September 2026 that page listed 18k yellow gold, 18k white gold, sterling silver and two-tone options, with no bridal or engagement category.
  • Gemstone accents including diamonds, white sapphires, blue topaz, emeralds and rubies.

That is a coherent brand doing one thing well. It also means that if you want the aesthetic on your left hand permanently, you are commissioning a ring, not buying one off their shelf.

The house metal spec, and what it costs you

The brand's quality page states plainly: "We use only 18k gold. Quite simply to give you more gold." It puts 18k at 75% pure gold and claims roughly 29% more gold than an equivalent 14k piece. The arithmetic checks out: 75 divided by 58.3 is about 1.29. Their sterling silver is described as "92.5% pure silver, mixed with various alloys to add strength to the metal," finished with rhodium, and their vermeil as 2.5 microns of 18k gold over sterling.

More gold is not automatically better for a ring worn every day. 18k is softer than 14k, so prongs wear faster and a bright polish dulls sooner. On a locket that sits on your chest, that difference barely registers. On an engagement ring that meets countertops and car doors, it does. Both are honest choices; the marketing framing of "more gold" answers a question about value, not about wear.

In Canada, whichever you choose has to be marked correctly. The Competition Bureau's requirements for marking precious metals state that gold articles must be a minimum of 9K and a maximum of 24K to carry a quality mark, with decimal equivalents including ".583 (14K)" and ".750 (18K)"; silver must be a minimum of .925 to be marked "sterling"; and platinum must be "at least 95% platinum" or an alloy of platinum with iridium or ruthenium at that level. A quality mark must be accompanied by a registered Canadian trademark applied the same way. The underlying rules sit in the Precious Metals Marking Regulations (C.R.C., c. 1303), last amended 17 June 2019.

MetalFinenessCanadian markEveryday ring notes
18k yellow gold75.0% gold18K or .750Warm colour, matches most MRK pieces, softer prongs
14k yellow gold58.3% gold14K or .583Slightly paler, holds prongs and polish longer
18k white gold75.0% gold18K or .750Almost always rhodium plated; replating is ongoing upkeep
Platinum95% minimumPLAT or platinumDensest and most expensive, no plating, scuffs to a matte patina
Sterling silver92.5% silversterling or .925Fine for lockets and stacking pieces, too soft for a centre stone setting

Stacking without wrecking anything

If your existing pieces are sterling and your engagement ring will be gold, the softer metal loses. Silver stacked directly against an 18k band will show wear on the silver within a year of daily contact. Two practical fixes: keep a spacer band between them, or put the silver on the other hand. Rhodium plating on white metal is a wear surface, not a permanent finish, and it will need redoing periodically. That is normal maintenance and not a defect.

The house diamond spec, read honestly

The same quality page says the brand uses "a better grade of diamond...FG-VS2." Those are GIA terms. GIA describes VS1 and VS2 stones as ones where "Inclusions are observed with effort but can be characterized as minor" on its diamond clarity page, sitting between VVS and the SI grades, where "Inclusions are noticeable."

Here is the honest part. On accent stones of one to two millimetres, the difference between F–G colour and, say, I colour is not something you can see set in yellow gold, and VS2 versus SI1 is invisible without magnification at that size. A stated melee spec is mostly a consistency promise: every stone across a collection matches, so a charm bought in five years still looks right beside one bought today. That is worth something. Paying a premium for higher grades on melee is not.

On a centre stone the calculation flips, because size makes inclusions and colour visible. Even then, VS2 and SI1 are usually eye-clean in a well-chosen stone, which is where most of the sensible money sits.

The brand also notes that its natural diamonds are sourced under the Kimberley Process. Worth knowing what that covers: the Kimberley Process describes itself as "an international initiative and intergovernmental forum to exclude conflict diamonds from the legitimate trade," and defines conflict diamonds as "rough diamonds used by rebel movements or their allies to finance conflict aimed at undermining legitimate governments." It is a certification about rough diamonds and conflict financing. It is not a broad audit of labour or environmental conditions, and no one should read it as one.

Where the money actually shows: cut

GIA's diamond cut page says "A diamond's cut refers to how it interacts with light," and grades brightness, fire and scintillation on a scale of Excellent, Very Good, Good, Fair and Poor. One thing that surprises people: GIA only assigns that cut grade to standard round brilliants. Fancy shapes get proportions reported but no overall cut grade, so with an oval, pear or emerald cut you are judging the stone by eye and by measurements, not by a letter. Our loose diamond search shows those measurements, and for fancy shapes they matter more than the clarity grade does.

If you are choosing a lab-grown centre stone, the reporting is changing. GIA announced on 2 June 2025 that it would stop applying its natural-diamond colour and clarity nomenclature to laboratory-grown diamonds and instead sort them into two categories, "premium" or "standard," defined by a combination of colour, clarity and finish metrics, on the basis that "More than 95% of laboratory-grown diamonds entering the market fall into a very narrow range of color and clarity." Existing GIA lab-grown reports remain valid. Other labs still issue letter grades. This is genuinely unsettled, so compare stones by their actual report and by looking at them, not by assuming two labs mean the same thing by the same letter.

Buying from the U.S. versus commissioning here

Monica Rich Kosann ships to Canada directly. As of September 2026 their shipping page states that "Duties and Taxes are the responsibility of the customer and included in the product price if shopping our site in CAD," with complimentary shipping on orders over CAD$300 and a signature required. For a locket or a charm, that is simple. For an engagement ring it is a different job, because sizing, setting a centre stone and later resizing are hands-on work best done where the ring can be seen and adjusted.

Building a ring that sits beside your pieces

  1. Note the exact metal of what you already wear. 18k yellow, sterling with rhodium and vermeil all read differently side by side, and vermeil in particular is plated, so it will not match forever.
  2. Choose the centre stone first if the stone matters most to you, or the setting first if the look does. Both work, they just constrain each other.
  3. Pick the shape, then compare cut grade or proportions within that shape in our loose diamond search.
  4. Choose the setting from our engagement ring settings, keeping profile low if you plan to stack a delicate band beside it.
  5. Set metal, size and engraving when you finish the ring, and match the karat to your existing pieces rather than defaulting.
  6. Look at the 3D preview with the stack in mind, not the ring alone.

What to do next

If you like the Monica Rich Kosann look, take the two things that actually define it, 18k gold and small consistent stones, and apply them to a setting built for daily wear. Start with a shape you like in the loose diamond search, pair it with a low-profile setting, and check the metal against what is already in your jewellery box before you order. More on shapes, grades and metals in our other guides.

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