Monday, July 23, 2007

Paint Chips sans Crimping Iron

Watching the horror of Bravo's "Top Design" inspired a false nostalgia in me for HGTV's "Design Star". I say "false" because I've never seen "Design Star" -- I would only read about how much better it was than "Top [of the dumpster] Design". The judges on Bravo's show (one of whom was very fond of the titular crimping iron) made it seem like such random, bitchy dreck (and not the awesome kind like Tyra dishes out on ANTM) that it made the show extremely unpleasant. At least with "Top Chef 2", it was left to the contestants to do that.

But with Vern Yip and Cynthia Rowley (annoyingly named fictional memoirs aside) on the "Design Star" team - how could it suck? OK, OK - I must have said that same thing about Todd Oldham, but I had no idea he'd given up carbs and all the brain cells that died without that precious, precious glucose. Vern Yip was one of my favorite designers from "Trading Spaces", and Cynthia Rowley makes handbags that I salivate over (as well as being a quirky '90s fashion design it-gal whose name brings up lots of real nostalgia for me... of course, ditto for Todd Oldham but let's hope Cynthia's not as robotic).

I have not read any published reviews of the show, but I'm willing to give it a go. Anything to try to get a bit of Tim Gunn-high, even by proxy.

when: July 29, 9.00pm (EST)
where: HGTV


Episodes of the first season are available at the HGTV website. I may love them already for that alone.

3 comments:

starbright oogi said...

is *design star* new? i need some more reality tv to cash some brain cells on. there is so much unfortunate design tv over the years that i admit i am reluctant to commit. but i await your review with anticipation.

aging cowgirl said...

I saw the first episode and was a little sad to see punky Lisa go. I wanted another look at her phonebook sculpture. My favorite part of the episode was the friendship between Josh Sparkle and Will.

zuppe said...

I had hoped punky Lisa would finally be a great punky designy person on tv. But alas. the space was kind of cheesy, I guess. Southern Belle has GOT to go.