He's a Glorious Bastard

A few weeks ago, when I attended a design-meeting with ex-students at the faculty of architecture (L.Quaroni, Università di Sapienza), I heard this great story about a young designer who auto-commissioned himself to design products for famous luxury brands and after publishing them on his site risks badly to be sued. Heard this story before? If not, it's something you won't want to miss, the guy's a freaking genius! I didn't catch his name on the meeting and then kinda forgot about him at all, until yesterday while surfing on yatzer.com I came across his new project. About that later. First let me tell you his story.

Ito Morabito (1977), son of a well-known french designer and retailer of luxury goods Pascal Morabito, at the age of 21 decides he couldn't bare spending 10 years inching his way up the career ladder and drops out of design school. Invents the pseudonym Ora Ïto to carve out his own identity and without using his father's financial sources neither connections starts to make himself a name. After different small jobs (too small for his talent, obviously) (he also worked for the shoe master himself- Roger Vivier, God.. I love his creations!) ... arrives the crucial point of his career: he virtually designes made-up products for mega brands like LV and Apple and so on and a selection of these 3D projects gets published on magazines like Crash and Jalouse. The media reaction is electrical and his site gets over 200.000 clicks per day, on the top of everything, desperate customers start inundate the luxury goods companies asking for the products which never actually existed. Companies like LVMH (Moët Hennessy/Louis Vuitton) are really infuriated for the caos created and strongly considere the possibility of sueing the young designer. Fortunatelly no legal actions are made, the designs were well-received by the consumers, no actual harm was made. Instead.. many (clever) brands try to hire him and soon enough Ora has a pretty long list of clients between who to choose.

Check out his works:

This curious item above is his latest project thanks to which I rediscovered him in the first place.

Guerlain's new parfume "Idylle" is a mystical scent in a tear drop shaped 18 K gold bottle which the young designer managed to encapsule perfectly in precious Baccarat crystal (30,000 euros, if interested). In order to smell it you have to break it. Quite expensive toy.. I think I'll pass this one;)





"Abstract", jewelry line for Cristofle.





This is the first jewelry collection made by Ora Ito.




"Fly", Chaise Lounge by Ora for B&B Italia.

Ora Ïto for LaCie.




Now this is farmost the coolest USB & FireWire hub I've ever seen in my life. Works both for Mac and PC. The lowest price is 89€.



A Hard Driver.
Pretty glam, huh?
LaCie.






Oxygenwater.
I LOVE THE SHAPE OF THIS BOTTLE!
Like a magic potion or something.





Heineken, The Green Line.
Isn't this a fancy design for a bottle of beer?
Drinking beer can now be almost classy thanks, to Ora Ïto.




Bookshelf "Ecco" made entirely of recycled material, Ora for Artelano of Paris. There's also a white version.





"Evolution" is the name of this armchair. Zanotta.



"Arborescence", home accessories collection for Cristofle.