Cleanliness Is Next To Chicness

By Desa Philadelphia

Is no corner of our lives safe from a designer makeover? The latest renovation site: the kitchen sink. METHOD dish soap, in scents like mandarin, mint and cucumber, comes in bulbous plastic bottles crafted by Karim Rashid, the Egyptian-Canadian designer who has put his stamp on perfume bottles, expensive furniture and garbage cans. Martha Stewart has released her own impeccable bottle of dishwashing liquid too.

Then there are the gloves. Cobalt-colored TRUE BLUES may not sound like a luxury item, but the impenetrable, powder-free vinyl gloves are moving out of restaurant kitchens and onto stylish drainboards everywhere, even at $10 a pair.

And perhaps the most salient example of designer permeation of the most utilitarian products is the O-CEL-O hourglass-shaped sponge by 3M. Sales tripled in 1999, after the company eschewed square for curvaceous and added brightly colored patterns. Now 3M is putting concept-driven designs on its sponges. "Washing dishes is not something that's pleasurable, so putting a little bit of design into it is good," says Zaki Kamandy, a second-year student at New York City's Parsons School of Design, whose stylized spoons-knives-forks-and-bubbles print--inspired by the gaggle that always gets washed last--will appear on O-Cel-O sponges this spring. "It's what you would want in a sponge." --By Desa Philadelphia