swipe bag
year
2025
client
Display Fever, The Luster
where
Vitruta Shop, Kings Cross, London
type
art (wearable sculpture)
Originally designed by Coperni, the Swipe Bag takes its name and form from the iconic “swipe to unlock” gesture, a symbol of fluid access, touch, and sleek modernity. With its minimalist oval silhouette, it has become a sculptural fashion object, equal parts phone, purse, and provocation.
This piece revisits the Swipe Bag as a candle holder, transforming its function and symbolism. Installed in the changing room of Vitruta, it becomes a site-specific offering to slowness, maintenance, and the impossibility of keeping anything intact. A vessel - not for carrying, but for posing.
It holds maybe a phone, maybe a lip-stick. It holds the idea of holding.
Held in place but not held securely, it gestures toward intimacy and exposure: someone has to touch it, light it, maintain it. Here, the Swipe Bag is to be lit. It insists on being touched. The candle slowly melts. What is held disappears.
It asks: What happens when the accessory becomes a burden? When the glow of the gala lights meets the smoke of something quietly melting in the corner of a shop?
This piece revisits the Swipe Bag as a candle holder, transforming its function and symbolism. Installed in the changing room of Vitruta, it becomes a site-specific offering to slowness, maintenance, and the impossibility of keeping anything intact. A vessel - not for carrying, but for posing.
It holds maybe a phone, maybe a lip-stick. It holds the idea of holding.
Held in place but not held securely, it gestures toward intimacy and exposure: someone has to touch it, light it, maintain it. Here, the Swipe Bag is to be lit. It insists on being touched. The candle slowly melts. What is held disappears.
It asks: What happens when the accessory becomes a burden? When the glow of the gala lights meets the smoke of something quietly melting in the corner of a shop?
