A great bag should be two things: made of glass, and topped with devil’s horns.
If our culture can’t find consensus on this yet, we will soon: The glass bag trend has arrived, courtesy of the French brand Coperni. The ready-to-wear company is a favorite of the Hadids, Hailey Bieber, and Rihanna. Coperni is perhaps best known for its Swipe handbag—a scooped-out extended oval that the designers say is a take on an iPhone’s “swipe to unlock” icon. Seen in another mindset, the bag is the same outline as an oversized deviled egg.
The original Coperni Swipe bag came to prominence over the last year—as Maddy in Euphoria, played by Alexa Demie, wore a mini Coperni Swipe in the infamous “Bitch, you better be joking” scene. During the last few months, an even more viral follow-up has been strategically unleashed: a highly breakable version of the bag, made in collaboration with the Heven, makers of handblown glassware. Designers Breanna Box and Peter Dupont told i-D that the glassblowing process used an air hose, since the glass was so thick, and that the purse function is the result of a drill and scissors. It’s true that the bag can technically hold one or two small objects. But mostly it functions like jewelry–it is a handheld art piece.
Glamour reached out to Coperni for information on how to purchase the glass bag and received this response: “Our design team is currently working on this Swipe Bag to be produced for a limited run at our online store and it is estimated that more exact info on price and launch date will be available within the following weeks.” Page Six has reported that the bags will retail for $2,700.
One minute you’re living in a world with very few giant glass handbags. The next moment they’re everywhere, and if you swing your arms too much, you’ll need to be hospitalized. At the Coperni fall-winter 2022 show, Gigi Hadid walked with a clear version of the bag. Other models carried the glass bag in a milky blue shade and in chrome.
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Then at the Grammys, the first weekend of April, two stars accessorized with the glass Coperni bag—Doja Cat carried the blue glass purse. Tinashe carried a muted red version. The glass of Tinashe’s bag echoed the material of her GCDS dress—its sheer shine building on top of the glossy pink of her gown. For Doja, the bag served to expose, literally, her quirkiness–she stuffed it with Werther’s Original Candies. After the red carpet, she did an outfit change, pairing her new gown with a colorless and transparent Coperni x Heven bag—the same one Hadid had showed off at the fashion week show.
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Only days later the glass purse ascended to its final form: It served as both a status symbol and an advertisement for another, more accessible status symbol. Last week Kylie Jenner made the glass bag the focal point of her look for a press day for the new Kardashian reality show. Wearing a white blazer and sheer pants, Jenner dangled the transparent Coperni on her fingers. Inside, eager viewers could clearly see it held only two items: a Kylie lip color and a Kylie lip gloss.
The glass bag inverts the key purpose of purses, that they hold, and hide, the messy but necessary items of life—tampons and used tissues and crumpled receipts. Instead the Coperni serves as an elaborate frame for its contents. The Kar-Jenners are masters at integrated product placement, and the Coperni glass bag is a perfect accessory for their cause. It says, “I have nothing to hide, and everything to promote.”
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“It’s a great way to advertise something you want people to see,” fashion historian Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell tells me. She also sees it as a gambit, in the age of Instagram, when virality is prized above all else. “It’s becoming ever more important to have something eye-catching, whether it’s a naked dress or a naked purse, to ensure that photos get shared.”
Glass purses aren’t a new innovation as much as a throwback—the Coperni x Heven bags reference the vintage glass bags from Murano, the famed glass-producing island just off Venice. “We can compare it to Cinderella’s glass slipper,” Chrisman-Campbell says. “It’s a very eye-catching yet very fragile piece. It almost defies reality that it can exist at all. It’s surrealist, and I think fashion is trending in that direction—you can’t believe your eyes.”
Despite a probable high retail price and the reasonable associations between the word glass and the word broken, the Heven designers are confident that their product is highly functional. Speaking to i-D, they enumerated its many uses: a place for a phone, for a wallet; a vase in which to hold flowers; and perhaps, for a woman walking alone at night, a weapon. Depending on its quality and name brand, a bag or a purse can be a status symbol or more like a shoddy ball and chain. An heirloom object, a functional investment, or just a sign of one’s own decrepitude. The Coperni x Heven bag is more transparent—if you will—about what a purse can be: a way to literally display wealth, with style.
Jenny Singer is a staff writer for Glamour. You can follow her on Twitter.
