“Donna Decorates Dallas” is one of the new shows in the Fall line-up of HGTV offerings. I had seen bits and pieces of it, and finally got the chance to view a full episode the other night. If you really love this show, please stop reading right now. I can’t go there with you.
DDD takes me back to the “big hair” decade of the eighties…and then some. Everything is big, overdone, and glitzy. In a recent episode, Donna decorated a “nook” for a client. It was a high window with what looked like a landing underneath it, and the whole area was accessible only by ladder. Donna junked that space up with more stuff per square inch than I have in my storage attic. It was cluttered and unappealing to me, although the client seemed very pleased. (Have you ever seen a client on one of these shows say, “I hate it, get it out of here now”)?
The larger decor job of the show was an entertainment den/man cave on the second floor of a home. It overlooked the first floor living area, and Donna had a contractor close the opening so that the sound from either floor would not infringe on the other space. It seemed like a logical idea. After that, everything went downhill. The centerpiece of the room was a huge white couch, with a very high back. I thought to myself, well, maybe if Barbie married Shrek, this would be their couch. I can’t imagine any other circumstance in which anyone would want it. And then she added a custom made blue light fixture that, while interesting, didn’t seem to match anything else in the room. Next came an item that the client had handpicked: a several foot high statue of a golfer. The whole thing was just overdone, expensive and over-the-top. Donna’s theme seems to be “more AND bigger is better.”
“Donna Decorates Dallas” could be entertaining if it weren’t so annoying. It makes one understand why some people in other countries dislike Americans in general. They see shows like this, and imagine that our whole lives revolve around decorating, redecorating and overdecorating our huge mansions—-in essence—it makes us appear very shallow. This is not the life or experience of most Americans.
I don’t feel the need to watch this show again. I don’t get any decorating ideas from it, as it is all too, too much for this simple being. I don’t do masses of fur, feathers and glitter as part of my decor. And the idea that simple and tasteful isn’t good enough is just too foreign to me. But if giant frou-frou is your thing, this may be the show for you.