I can say that grabbing a blade bare handed feels very strange when you are used to doing it with gloves. Since I skate on paramounts that have no sharp parts other than the actual blade edges, I've never worried about cutting myself from stress on my fingers on the stanchons (I've seen this happen to other skaters at my rink - most get cut even with gloves on, and regularly wear bandaids to protect their fingers), but I do find that while wearing gloves, with less friction it's easier to do an open palm grab (like for a haircutter/biellmann)and slide my fingers into the right place - without gloves, not only is the blade very cold which I'm not used to feeling, but my fingers don't slide easily and I usually feel like I just can't get them into the right place.
As far as aesthetics, I really liked the ones that Adelina Sotnikova wore during CoC - I only noticed them during close-ups, otherwise they were so well matched to her skin tone that they almost disappeared while she was skating.