i just think that boats should look like boats and function like boats. Sharp edges might well be the style in the IKEA age, but they make a painful impression when you bump into one -- and thats a strong likelihood absent the seat belts you recommend. Plus, molding sharp corners is difficult. I wonder how much time the glass finishers spent cleaning them up.
Sailboat styling goes thru phases. It used to be the design rules (CCA, IOR, and predecessors) that pretty much dictated hull shapes, then there was the period when unemployed athletic-shoe designers applied their acquired skills and every boat looked like a sneaker (not to mention every SUV). Even with no rule-based shapes to imitate, designers still imitate each other. This month it's the chine stern (tho the Hinckley seems to have forsaken that fad).
And maybe these wide, wedge-shaped boats don't heel as much as a Bermuda 40, but when they do heel, you have a lot farther to fall in the big wide cockpits and saloons.
You've shown us some of your design and construction work, Tom, and it's pretty evident that you have a well-tuned sense of what's sensible, functional, and aesthetically appropriate in what context. I guess I have my own feelings about what makes a boat attractive. I'll never forget going into the Whaling Museum in New Bedford and being drawn as if by a force field to a whale boat, about 30 feet, on display. If I had laid hands on a woman the way I did that boat I'd be in prison still. That boat was a work of art, an evolved tool, every ounce of it directed toward a single purpose.