Leave it to the French: Tomorrow, the SLOTT gallery in Paris, working with Exquise, a design production firm, is unveiling "Preliminaries," an exhibition featuring specially commissioned designs around the theme of love (and sex). The participants--Florence Jaffrain, Arik Levy, Matthieu Lehanneur, Matali Crasset--happen to be some of the biggest names in French product design. Here's what they came up with.

Matthieu Lehanneur is best-known for his recent design of a natural air-filtration system. He describes this piece, The Power of Love, as a foreplay tool for sharing music. Each set of headphones plays whatever different tunes get the listener in the mood, since "desire is born of difference." Sure you could listen to iPods in bed, but where's the sex appeal in that?

Arik Levy'sLove Rug comes with a system of wall harnesses....

...the idea is that you can configure to the rug to crawl up the walls, to provide a cushy backing for Kamasutra gyrations.

Levy's display vase for a metal vibrator designed by Jimmy Jane.

Levy's at-home confessional was inspired by Catholic confessionals. But this one is for telling dirty secrets; the designer says it "in no way aims to commit blasphemy." Kind of reminds us of the puppet scene from Being John Malkovich, depicting Abelard and Héloïse. Remember that?

Sometimes, love, ahem, flies solo. Jaffrain's Belly Love couch is basically fur-covered massage chair, which is supposed to coddle you like a sea-reef. The fur lights up, thanks to electroluminescent fibers; they also release essential oils. Don't lend this out to your friends, and don't buy it second-hand.

Levy is basically the design-world equivalent of Pepe LePew. He writes that that Love Chair, is "a chair that I designed with love and that I had made so it could be purchased with love, wounded with love and then healed with love. This is an object’s reason for being." In other words, it's a chair that's been ripped and stitched up. Which apparently sounds better in French.

Crasset's Aequore lies "in direct contrast to the trivial rectangle of the bed, and thus allows bodies to move more freely. The contoured edge that defines the borders of the platform creates a kind of circular pillow opening myriad possibilities for lovers in all 360 degrees." It was inspired, quite naturally, by the sci-fi savage look of Barbarella.

The names for Levy's new cabinet designs can't be published. They can be arranged in a very covert way, as shown...

...but they're meant to resemble certain germane parts of the human anatomy.