Greek researcher Ioannis Michaloudis has created the Air Swipe bag for fashion brand Coperni using NASA-produced silica aerogel that was developed to "catch stardust".
The lightweight bag was unveiled at Coperni's F/W 2024 runway show during Paris Fashion Week.
The small bag is made from silica aerogel, which Michaloudis said is the "lightest sold [material] on planet Earth". The material ? which has a chemical composition similar to gas ? forms the shell of the bag, while the interior is air.
Coperni has released a bag made of 99 per cent air
This means that the total volume of the bag consists only of one per cent solid material.
The Air Swipe bag has a dimension of 27 by 16 by 6 centimetres and weighs 35 grams.
It is formed in a stainless steel mould with a "supercritical" drying process, which uses specific temperatures and pressures to transform liquids into glass. It was created by the researcher using a NASA-produced material called silica aerogel
Michaloudis said that the bag is delicate but not fragile and that the material can handle pressure of 4,000 times its weight and heat up to 1,200 degrees Celsius. Silica aerogel's properties were first developed by scientist Peter Tsou.
"It can withstand three times the speed of a bullet," Michaloudis told Dezeen.
"And that's why [NASA] has selected the material to catch stardust," he continued, referring to the cells attached to deep-space satellites for collecting high-sp...