British designer Christopher Shellis has created an unbelievably expensive women’s clutch bag – it costs a whopping $180,000 and it’s so small that it can hardly hold more than a cell phone. The tiny bag measures 7 inches by 5 inches, but it’s surprisingly heavy at half-a-kilogram, thanks to all the bling piled on to it.

All that weight is attributed to the 345 diamonds that are studded on the 18-carat gold bag. It took Shellis and his team of dedicated goldsmiths and diamond setters over 100 hours to create the bag. “The inspiration and design was drawn from the Buckingham Palace gates,” Shellis explained.

“Like the palace gates, it conveys its own very regal presence. It would not look out of place among the collection of jewels in the Tower of London itself. It could easily be worn by any royal princess.”

Shellis, founder of the designer label ‘Borgezie’, guarantees that the bag will never break, not even for a thousand years. “Like all Borgezie creations, the bag is designed to be a true treasure and comes along with the usual 1,000-year guarantee,” he said.

He went on to defend the size of the clutch: “The bag is practical,” he insisted. “It is big enough to hold a purse, or makeup or phone – but whoever buys it will probably have staff to hold these items for them.” The clutch supposedly comes with a secret sliding compartment, big enough to hold an iPhone.

Although Shellis insists that his clutch is the most expensive one in the world, there does exist a costlier one. The world’s most expensive handbag is, in fact, the 18-carat gold Mouawad 1,000 Nights Diamond Purse, studded with over 4,500 diamonds. It costs about $3.8 million and is listed in the 2010 Guinness World Records for being the most valuable purse in the world.

via Daily Mail