Greek researcher Ioannis Michaloudis has created the Air Swipe bag for trend model Coperni utilizing NASA-produced silica aerogel that was developed to “catch stardust”.

The light-weight bag was unveiled at Coperni’s F/W 2024 runway present throughout Paris Vogue Week.

The small bag is produced from silica aerogel, which Michaloudis mentioned is the “lightest offered [material] on planet Earth”. The fabric – which has a chemical composition just like gasoline – varieties the shell of the bag, whereas the inside is air.

Because of this the full quantity of the bag consists solely of 1 per cent stable materials.

The Air Swipe bag has a dimension of 27 by 16 by 6 centimetres and weighs 35 grams.

It’s fashioned in a chrome steel mould with a “supercritical” drying course of, which makes use of particular temperatures and pressures to rework liquids into glass.

Michaloudis mentioned that the bag is delicate however not fragile and that the fabric can deal with stress of 4,000 instances its weight and warmth as much as 1,200 levels Celsius. Silica aerogel’s properties had been first developed by scientist Peter Tsou.

“It may well stand up to 3 times the velocity of a bullet,” Michaloudis advised Dezeen.

“And that is why [NASA] has chosen the fabric to catch stardust,” he continued, referring to the cells hooked up to deep-space satellites for accumulating high-speed area supplies.

The sunshine-blue color of the fabric comes from the “nanopores” on its floor, which Michaloudis in comparison with the sky of the planet.

“It is extremely ethereal, nevertheless it protects our planet,” he mentioned.

“It’s our gown. The gown of the planet is our sky,” he continued, linking the environment with the fabric’s use as a trend accent.

Michaloudis has labored with NASA for many years on quite a lot of initiatives and was on the workforce researching the fabric and its purposes.

The Air Swipe bag and materials characterize an “in-between area” between science and artwork, the researcher added.

“The fabric is between one thing that does and one thing that doesn’t exist. It too is on this in-between state, like an angelic state,” he mentioned. “That is the in-between area of the Coperni bag.”

Michaloudis works as a researcher for a number of establishments in Greece and overseas and labored with Coperni to conceptualise the bag.

Coperni has launched plenty of clothes gadgets and equipment that use superior expertise, together with a gown created with spray-on fibers.

This Paris Vogue Week additionally noticed Danish model Samsoe Samsoe host a pop-up area with a counter produced from outdated T-shirts.

The pictures is courtesy of Ioannis Michaloudis.