A favorite literary anecdote of mine concerns Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges. He began his career as a journalist and turned to fiction by writing a fake book review of a nonexistent book. As the story goes, readers all over Buenos Aires rushed to bookstores in droves, requesting the book that Borges had reviewed. In the design world, French designer Ora-Ito accomplished much the same thing when he “successfully generated fake publicity around the fake products he designed for real luxury brands.”

Multifonction Oven Carbon. Designed by Ora-Ãto for Gorenje.

This created “a high demand for these nonexistent products,” launching Ora-Ito into the design spotlight. He produced the objects he had only previously envisioned under his concept of “Simplexity–the art of making a complex object look simple.”

In Milan, Ora-Ito recently partnered with prestigious brands as varied as Guerlain, Steiner, and Christofle to present a cross-disciplinary exhibition–“presented entirely in black.” One of his designs, the Multifonction Oven Carbon [sic], took Slovenian kitchen appliance company into the future with a sleek oven made of black glass and carbon. If you don’t know Gorenje, you should–if only for their absolutely delicious line of retro refrigerators, available in a rainbow of colors, including the sorbet-inspired Lime Green, Raspberry Pink, and Juicy Orange. But back to black. The Multifunction Oven Carbon is “distinguishable by the uniform aspect of their black glass front panels with carbon.” By joining Gorenje’s appliance know-how and Ora-Ito’s design viewpoint, both brands benefit: the resulting carbon oven “constitutes an excellent choice for lovers of pure lines and multifunctional home appliances.”