design classic: Champagne coupe

Designer

Anonymous.

Details

Champagne saucers, £60 for a set of two, LSA International.

Background

As legends go, the one that fizzes around the champagne coupe is a decadent delight. For centuries, it’s been whispered that the glass took its shape from the mould of one of the perfectly petite breasts of the hedonistic French queen Marie Antoinette – and that her courtiers were encouraged to toast her good health with it...

The truth is a little less showy – the coupe was actually invented around 1663, almost a hundred years before Louis XVI’s doomed wife was born, and was crafted in England.

See our edit of the best wine coolers.

In the States, it was the only thing to be seen drinking bubbly from during the Twenties and Thirties – think underground speakeasies during Prohibition, when champagne towers literally overflowed with the stuff. In Sixties and Seventies Blighty, meanwhile, our mother’s coupes were more likely to be filled to the brim with Babycham than Bolly.

By the Eighties, the coupe was swept aside in favour of the bubbles-retaining flute. And while it’s true that the wide surface area of the saucer causes champagne’s effervescence to dwindle, who holds on to a glass of Moët long enough for it to get warm and flat? Just ask Kate Moss.

In 2014, she tapped into the aristocratic French myth when she had a mould of her left breast made into a champagne coupe in collaboration with Mayfair restaurant 34, to celebrate 25 years of loping down the catwalk. ‘What an honour to be alongside Marie Antoinette,’ said La Moss. And so the legend fizzes on...

See our edit of the best champagne glasses.