I hate the new Corvettes. They remind me of a formerly attractive movie star that's just gone to seed, all bloated and tacky, a shade of their former self. If a car design could die of a drug overdose in a seedy motel off the strip, the new Corvette would do it.

In contrast, this ill-fated Pininfarina-styled Corvette from the '60s is so beautiful it makes me want to weep. It's a long story, but the short of it is that GM made some Corvette bodies available to Pininfarina back in 1963, and the Rondine concept, as it came to be known, was unveiled at the Paris Motor Show that year. And everyone...hated it. By 1964 the plug was pulled and the concept never saw production.

You can read the full depressing tale at Corvette Fever, see more beautiful photos of the car at Ultimate Car Page, and read about a 2008 auction where a Pininfarina-Museum-housed version sold for $1.76 mil at Autoblog.

Artist: fueledbycoffee

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Our good friends over at Ecouterre are teaming with the Textile Arts Center to bring Fashion's Night Out to Brooklyn! The theme of the night is slow fashion: fashion that takes a bit longer to design, construct, or find but creates outfits just as stylish and fashionable as high-fashion. There's a detailed schedule here.

6 - 7pm

"Hack Sustainable Fashion" workshop

7 - 8:30pm

Ecouterre eco-fashion panel and Q&A moderated by Jill Fehrenbacher, with panelists Greta Eagan (FashionMeGreen), Caroline Priebe (Uluru), Sarah Scaturro (Cooper-Hewitt Museum), Titania Inglis, Shabd Simon-Alexander, Margarita Mileva (M2 Jewelry), and Laura "London" Shirreff (Waste Not Want Not)

8:30 - 11pm

Shopping hours with local designers (reMade USA, Wiksten, Shabd, Titania Inglis, and M2 Jewelry), free DIY workshops, food, drinks, live DJ

Textile Arts Center

505 Carroll St.

Brooklyn, NY 11215

I could do without the excessive jump-cutting, but this video of Ito Morabito's Ora-Gami chair definitely has its moments:

ORA ITO from MTC CORP on Vimeo.

Produced under French designer Morabito's Ora-Ito brand, the Ora-Gami keeps good company; we love the Ora-Ito Ayrton (below), a bed inspired by the F1 driver, and there are tons of other eye-catching pieces of furniture, bottles, lighting designs, consumer products, and more in Ora-Ito's crazy thick portfolio. It's a Friday, so steal a few hours to browse and check it all out here. You won't be sorry.

In a very Apple-like move, Microsoft has posted a video of Young Kim, the industrial designer behind their new Arc Mouse, talking about the design process. Apple vs. Microsoft aside, we're pleased to see any giant corporation discussing elements of industrial design that the public doesn't typically get to see--prototyping, modelmaking, ergonomic considerations, et cetera--and we hope that yet more competitors will jump on this particular bandwagon.