Men's Diamond Earrings
If you are looking for an encyclopedic definition on the history of men wearing earrings you will find they are described as a personal adornment, sometimes in the form of an amulet, attached to the ear lobe.
Men wearing earrings can be traced back to prehistoric times when the cave dwellers pierced heir ears and inserted bones to signify their virility.
Some primitive tribes in third world countries still distort their earlobes by stretching them with the insertion of large plugs or heavy stones.
The Egyptians were the first to wear earrings in the form we are familiar with today. They introduced large gold hoops which eventually decreased in size and supported pendants. The fighting men of Babylonia and Assyria wore earrings to denote their rank, while the Greeks favoured more intricate styles which often had hanging pendants which tinkled. The Romans were first to wear earrings set with precious stones.
Men’s earrings fell from favour in the Middle Ages when headdresses were de rigueur, but they underwent a huge revival during the Renaissance when pearls were included, followed by diamonds in the eighteenth century. The cameo came into its own during the nineteenth century with the invention in 1900 of the screw device which meant that you no longer had to pierce your ears to wear earrings. This may have been one of the costliest inventions of all time as I have lost count of the number of earrings with screw fittings that have fallen off and got lost in the past, but thankfully clips and piercings are now back as the most common attachments.
Nowadays any man can wear earrings, but whether they feel happy doing so is an entirely different matter. One reason for this is that for some years they were associated with a man’s sexuality and worn mostly by the gay fraternity. This is certainly no longer the case and thankfully men are beginning to discover that just putting an earring in their ear – especially if it is a diamond stud – makes them feel really good. They complement any outfit from denim jeans to an formal dinner suit.