If paying for something that is 99 percent air doesn’t seem like a good deal, then this bag may not be for you.
French designer Coperni has created a bag using NASA’s silica airgel nanomaterial.
This space-age material has been used to capture stardust and insulate the Mars rover, but is now used for high fashion.
Made from one of the lightest materials known to science, the entire bag weighs just 33 grams, a little more than six sheets of A4 paper.
But while it may seem a little delicate, Coperni insists it can still support the weight of your iPhone.
This incredible bag might look like it’s made of cloud, but it was actually made of airgel by French designer Coperni.
In a post on Instagram, Coperni showed off the incredible bag, which has been dubbed the Air Swipe Bag.
In the post, you can see that the bag is translucent and cloudy, with white whips running through the material like trapped smoke.
However, on social media, many fashion fans have been skeptical about the practicality of the bag.
One commenter wrote: “What can you put on it? Does it break when you drop it?”
Another skeptical commenter asked: ‘Does it serve the purpose of a bag though?’
However, even though the material looks like a cloud, the designers promise that it will be able to hold at least some of your things.
In response to a commenter, Coperni wrote: “May hold an iPhone.”
Given that the iPhone 15 Max weighs 221 grams, this would mean that the bag could hold more than six times its own weight.
On social media, some questioned whether this lightweight material could be practical, but Coperni insists the bag can at least carry a phone.
Developed by Professor Ioannis Michaloudis of the American University of Cyprus, the bag uses the nanomaterial silica airgel.
In the post, Coperni writes: “The Air Swipe bag is made of 99% pure nothing and 1% glass, the glass of the future.”
Aerogels are full of pores at the nanometer level, like a sponge full of incredibly small holes.
These pores trap air, creating a delicate but not fragile material, solid and extremely light.
The bag is made from the same material NASA used to capture comet dust on the Stardust mission.
Aerogels were initially developed by NASA in the 1930s as a new form of insulation to help spacecraft withstand the intense conditions of space.
To understand how this material is made, let’s imagine making gelatin with powdered gelatin and water.
When you combine this polymer and solvent and let the mixture sit, you will get a gelatin gel.
Normally, if you heated the gelatin until all the water evaporated, all that would be left would be powdered gelatin again.
But aerogels manage to maintain their gel-like structure even after all the solvent has been removed; creating materials that are stronger and lighter than anything else.
Coperni calls it “the lightest solid on planet Earth.”
The space-age bag weighs just 33 grams total thanks to being made of 99 percent air and just 1 percent silica-based glass.
The bag is the largest piece made of airgel according to the designer
However, the incredible capabilities of the material do not end there.
As Coperni points out in his post, this material developed by NASA is capable of withstanding temperatures of up to 12,000 °C and a pressure of 4,000 times its weight.
While this may not be very useful in a bag, it is very useful for space missions.
NASA has used more advanced versions of this material to insulate spacecraft and landers, including the Mars rover.
But its most notable use has been capturing comet particles during the Stardust mission in 1999.
Coperni says, “This Air Swipe bag is the largest object ever made from this space-tech nanomaterial.”
The bag was launched in the Fall/Winter 2024 collection, but Coperni has not said whether it will be commercially available.
The Air Swipe bag was made as part of the designer’s Fall/Winter 2024 collection.
Although the bag appeared at the ready to wear collection show in Paris, Coperni has not yet announced whether it will be available to the public or how much it might cost.
MailOnline has contacted Coperni for additional information.
However, this is not Coperni’s first use of space-age materials in its fashion offerings.
Last year, the designer introduced a limited-edition bag made from resin and moon rock found in France in 1968.
Coperni said the Mini Meteorite Swipe Bag “combines classical and primitive archaeology, design and art.”
However, at an eye-watering price of €40,000 (£35,000), this price could be too high even for a 55,000-year-old chunk of meteorite.