This show on Bravo is my new addiction.
Watching faithfully every Tuesday night I
have come to some conclusions after the third episode.
This is my review on MDD.
The show has two designers who are more talented
and more entertaining than the rest of the cast.
Lets meet them~
Kathryn Ireland,
a British designer, has a decorating style I call English Bohemian.
Her showroom of fabrics have every color in the rainbow,
and lots of exotic patterns that exude happiness.
Her fabrics have swept Los Angeles by storm,
and the Indian prints in particular seem suited to the West Coast life style.
I love how Kathyrn mixes it up with color and pattern~
I adore this room.
She is a master mixing scale and color.
What a happy room,
and the dark furniture keeps it from being sacharine.
Another one of Kathyrn's brilliantly mixed bedrooms.
She loves using oversized patterns with geometric and odd ball colors.
This is Kathyrn's kitchen and it suits her to a tee.
I love the painted green cabs with pops
of bright color and the dark floor to ground it all.
Kathryn can do a softer palette nicely too.
Bohemian and quaint in that English way.
On the show I just love watching her!
She doesn't "look" like a decorator, or "act" like a decorator...
she seems quite ordinary and average and you can't help but love her.
It is fun to see her in action running her business, running late to meetings,
and being a single mom to teenage boys.
There is a lot of drinking in this show.
Having clients with megabucks and
mega-expectations can do that to anyone.
"Chardonnay, please"
Kathyrn seems to like drinking with Martyn the most,
as they are design buds and good friends.
They share their projects and talk design together.
Here I bet they are talking about her client Shannon.
Kathryn has been decorating two houses
for a client named Shannon Factor
who married into the Max Factor fortune.
Shannon Factor has lots of expensive stuff.
She has rooms and garages filled to the brim
and she wants Kathyrn to figure out how to use all her things.
This is quite a task, but Kathyrn can handle it.
Kathryn says plainly that Shannon's house is a monument to bad taste.
Besides being talented, she is quite hilarious,
and in this scene she is actually trying on used bras at the flea market.
Her double D boobs get a lot of
comments during the show from her fellow decorators.
I love seeing what she wears, she shows up in the plainest of clothes,
and then she will appear in a mod caftan
or an eyelet mini-dress flaunting her womanly figure.
You just have to love a woman like that!
I can see hanging out with K, drinking wine
and laughing our butts off dishing about Shannon.
Another thing she has going for her is she has dogs and kids.
I think both of those things round out a person...
and if you don't have kids you should at least have dogs!
Kathryn and a typical morning in her house I imagine~
lounging in the family bed.
This is so Kathyrn!
Maybe you are starting to get the picture about Kathyrn
and her colorful Bohemian English ways...
She is a super talent.
The other design star on Million Dollar Decorators
is just about the opposite of Kathyrn.
It is kind of like Ginger and Maryanne on Gilligan's Island.
Ultra Design Diva,
Mary McDonald.
Seen here with her assistant who is always
doing the opposite of what Mary wants.
If she were my assistant, she would be no longer in my employ~
but clearly I can't afford to have an assistant,
so that is just a guess on my part.
Elegant Mary is very dramatic and in the first episode I thought she was a monster.
After her client confided in her that she was now going through a divorce,
Mary shouted, oh no, you can't sell "my house".
No words of compassion to her client/friend.
Mary, that was ugly.
I am hoping it was editing that made Mary look like a monster.
She then told her soon to be divorced client that
she had to decorate the guest house on a full budget,
not a reduced budget,
otherwise her client should use catalogues
to decorate the guest house!
Mary proceeded to buy tons of expensive unnecessary accessories
to decorate a guest house that was going on the market.
I had all but washed my hands of Mary..
and then epsiode two and three came along.
I turned into a Mary lover.
She has fabulous style,
and she wasn't really that mean after all.
She was kind of sassy and funny.
And she has dogs~look at these cuties!
She has to be nice.
Mary's style of decorating is what I would call Modern Glam.
She seems to use a formula for every room she does.
She says she doesn't, but I have noticed she uses
a dark neutral and a light neutral and then often adds one bright color.
For example, chocolate and cream (and orange).
Or Black and white (and hot pink).
The other part of the formula Mary uses is there
is always a wide stripe, and some animal print.
Lets see if she stays true to her "formula" in the future episodes.
This was the latest room she created for a clothing design diva named Jill.
Now Jill was very cute, but kind of a spoiled brat,
and Mary had her number. Jill hated the diagonal striped floor
before Mary got to decorate the room and fill it up
with the rest of the furnishings and accessories.
I hated the price of the diagonal floor~at a cool eight thousand dollars,
I thought of quite a few design bloggers
who could have painted that floor for a fraction of the price.
At any rate, in the end Jill was thrilled,
even though Mary said she wanted to strangle her during the project.
"Stop taking the paintbrush out of my hand while I am painting",
she said to no one in particular
(well it was said in front of the Bravo tv camera crew)
and I thought that was the most brilliant thing I had heard anyone say.
YES! Let the designer do her designs....then you can weigh in at the end!
Anyway, I love what she does to rooms.
She creates drama, and mood
and she does it in an elegant way~her rooms are always classy.
Mary had a book published last fall,
and I am going to get myself a copy, because I think
Mary is a super design star!
Two talented designers showcasing
how they design in an entertaining format.
Being someone who makes a living being a designer,
it is soooo much fun to see how the projects are
on the million dollar scale.
Signing off with this review,
yours truly,
The Multi-Dollar Decorator
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