French fashion brand Coperni recently unveiled a unique version of its iconic Swipe bag made from the lightest solid material on Earth, aerogel. Named ‘Air Swipe’, the accessory weighs only 37 grams.

Every year, Coperni recreates its popular Swipe bag in a unique, thought-provoking way. Last year, they created a limited-edition “meteorite’ handbag hand-carved from a meteorite that fell on Earth thousands of years ago. That sounds pretty tough to beat, but this year’s project was even more ambitious. The French brand partnered with Greek researcher and visual artist Ioannis Michaloudis to create the lightest handbag in the world out of a revolutionary material called aerogel. This ultra-light material allowed Michaloudis to create a 27 by 16 by 6 centimeters handbag that weighs only 37 grams.

Silica aerogel is the lightest solid material in the world, as it consists of 99% air and 1% glass. It is produced in a stainless steel mold through a special drying process, which uses specific temperatures and pressures to transform liquids into glass.

While very delicate, aerogel is not as fragile as you might think. It can withstand pressure of 4,000 times its weight and heat up to 1,200 degrees Celsius, so if you’re wondering if the Air Swipe bag can actually hold anything, the answer is most certainly ‘yes’!

“The material is between something that does and something that does not exist. It too is in this in-between state, like an angelic state,” Ioannis Michaloudis said. “This is the in-between space of the Coperni bag.”

The Coperni Air Swipe Bag made its debut at the F/W 2024 runway show during Paris Fashion Week and has been the talk of the fashion world ever since.

 

Interestingly, in 2019, artisans at London-based design studio Bompass & Parr used aerogel technology to create the world’s lightest dessert which was 96 percent air and weighed just one gram.