French fashion brand Coperni recently presented a novel version of its iconic Swipe bag made of the lightest solid material on Earth – airgel. The accessory called “Air Swipe” weighs only 37 grams.
Every 12 months, Coperni recreates its popular Swipe bag in a novel, thought-provoking way. Last 12 months, they created a limited edition “meteorite” bag, hand-carved from a meteorite that fell to Earth hundreds of years ago. That sounds pretty hard to beat, but this 12 months’s project was much more ambitious. The French brand has partnered with Greek researcher and visual artist Ioannis Michaloudis to create the lightest handbag in the world from a revolutionary material called airgel. This ultra-light material allowed Michaloudis to create a bag measuring 27 by 16 by 6 centimeters, which weighs only 37 grams.
Silica airgel is the lightest solid material in the world since it consists of 99% air and 1% glass. It is produced in a stainless-steel mold through a special drying process that uses specific temperatures and pressures to remodel the liquid into glass.
Airgel, although very delicate, just isn’t as delicate because it could seem. It can withstand pressures as much as 4,000 times its weight and temperatures as much as 1,200 degrees Celsius, so when you’re wondering if the Air Swipe bag can actually hold anything, the answer is unquestionably yes!
“The material is somewhere between something that exists and something that doesn’t exist. She is also in an intermediate state, like the angelic state” – Ioannis Michaloudis he said. “This is the intermediate space of the sac of Coperni.”
The Coperni Air Swipe Bag debuted at the F/W 2024 show during Paris Fashion Week and has been the talk of the fashion world ever since.
(*37*), in 2019, craftsmen from the London design studio Bompass & Parr used airgel technology to create the world’s lightest dessert, which consisted of 96% air and weighed only one gram.
