A Tango with Titanium,
A Caress from Carbon
and a Shimmy with Steel—Feel Free to Flirt.

Once a year The New York Times Magazine publishes “The Lives They Lived.” It's a collection of snip-its featuring people who made significant contributions to society – some more notable than others. It tends to shy away from big-name politicians and A-list celebrities, but instead dedicates its page space to the man who invented the laugh track, Charles Douglass. Or Kemmons Wilson, who revolutionized road-trips by creating a family-friendly hotel chain known as Holiday Inn. It's hard not to smile when you read it, thinking of a simple idea that blossomed into a product or a way of thinking that revolutionized the way we live.

Perhaps the magazine will someday feature the jewelry designers of today who are shifting the approach to jewelry. Instead of exclusively using traditional precious metals such as platinum, gold and silver to complete a look, these designers are now mixing them with were once was considered less traditional materials, like steel and carbon. It's metamorphosing not only the style of jewelry, but also the cost.

Today's hottest designers are unabashed about using the finest gold intertwined with carbon and accented with diamonds. They are cutting-edge and targeting a free-spirited crowd with no frontiers. They mix silver and titanium. Gold and steel. Carbon and silver. They've helped create a shift from viewing colored diamonds as low-rent to something exclusive and unique.

It takes grit and guts to be so uninhibited with an approach like this to jewelry. As clothing designers took more and more risks to explore all facets of fashion—from material to layers to the body—jewelry got pushed to the back. Now, thanks to a new freedom found through unconvential materials and finer manufacturing techniques, jewelry has become more than a means to finish a look—it can now be the centerpiece of style.

The trend now is to exploit materials that were once used only for industrial uses. For instance, Nikon boast about using titanium in their camera bodies, but today men and women are the ones attracting attention by flaunting their matching titanium wedding bands. All over the runways in Italy, there was a marriage of eccentric materials. Kelly Liddicoat Designs hand-constructs painstakingly elaborate designs using not gold or silver, but titanium with exotic yellow-orange diamonds and sapphires in rings and brooches.

Metals such as steel and carbon, once considered hip only for those who couldn't afford real jewelry, are having their day. They now complement platinum links like “a metaphor between the past and future” (from Jewels Make Styles). Mixing steel with materials like emeralds or Tahitian pearls is for the daring and the courageous.

Uninhibited and adventurous. Happy and spirited. Mix your metals and mess with the minds of those who thought they understood contemporary. Just do a search above for a jeweler near you.