Monday, August 3, 2009

Design Star: back on track

My favorite TV show, Design Star, redeemed itself from last week’s awful kitchen challenge. Phew! There really was nowhere to go but up, since the contestants embarrassed themselves and the show. Now my favorite designers are back in the lead, and can you believe that Torie, everybody’s weak link, is right up there with them!

This week’s challenge was my favorite: the white room, where each designer starts off with an identical white space. It’s a total blank slate, and a perfect opportunity for each designer to showcase their talent, imagination and ability to execute their design.

And—are you ready? All the design elements had to be purchased from a grocery store. Who dreams up these things? These producers are insane! They must be laughing their butts off, coming up with ideas to make things as difficult and high-stress as possible.

The top three rooms selected by the judges were my exact picks. My favorite was Dan, who raided the produce aisle and chose apples as his main design element. He created a very moody, sophisticated, rich-looking room in reds and browns. It was phenomenal. Vern Yip said it was the most thought-out room he’d ever seen on Design Star—total high praise, and well deserved.

Nathan painted his walls a matte black and dripped milk down them to create an interesting striped effect. Then he strung up his own fresh orange chandelier, which totally killed. Those strings of sliced oranges must have made the room smell divine!


But the shocker was Torie, who was voted onto the show by her fellow contestants because they thought she’d be easy to beat. Last week when the designers were choosing their kitchen teams, Torie was chosen dead last.


Well guess what? Torie totally stepped up and pulled off a hip, young space, with vibrant colors that went from magenta and yellow to black and white zebra stripes on the floor. She even scrunched up garbage bags and colorful napkins to make some bold wall art that everybody was asking about. A bit crazy, yet not chaotic, because there was uniformity in the stripes and balance in the colors.

The rest of the group was mediocre at best. But let’s face it. I know I’d be hard-pressed to come up with ideas for decorating with cereal boxes and fruit!

Again, I have to give it to the judges. They voted out Jen, the color specialist, who never proved her ability in what was supposed to be her strong suit. She tried to be eclectic and create this contemporary Japanese room, but the colors didn’t work, her idea fell flat, and her scale and proportion were off. Her room amounted to scatterings of little things, and there was really nothing to draw your eye in.

I can’t wait for the next episode. Unfortunately, that’s going to have to wait until I get back from my trip. I’m mixing business with pleasure—this is our family vacation, but I’ll also be teaching a home decorating workshop aboard the Crystal Serenity. I’ll be posting photos as we go along.

But first, AAARGHHH! I’ve got to get back to my packing!

0 comments: