Martyn Lawrence Bullard on Million Dollar Decorators: "Modern Luxury Is Comfort"

Martyn Lawrence Bullard said it plainly: "Modern luxury is comfort. I live by Oscar Wilde's saying that all beautiful things belong to the same age — I use things…" — and Premier Guide Miami was in the room when it happened.

Interior designer to the stars, Martyn Lawrence Bullard has transferred his passion for fashion into interior design to create fashion-forward homes for notable personalities including Sharon and Ozzy Osbourne, Cher, Sir Elton John and David Furnish, Christina Aguilera, Eva Mendes, Ellen Pompeo, Kid Rock, and Tamara Mellon, founder and president of Jimmy Choo. Named among Elle Decor's top 25 interior designers, Bullard brought his fashion and decorating sensibilities to Bravo's reality drama Million Dollar Decorators, which premiered Tuesday, May 31 at 10 PM ET/PT. The show explores the work and personal lives of Los Angeles-based designers Martyn Lawrence Bullard, Kathryn Ireland, Jeffrey Alan Marks, Mary McDonald, and Nathan Turner — tastemakers who exchange advice and war stories while competing for the same top-tier clients and their endless budgets.

PREMIER GUIDE MIAMI: Since you are a part of the Bravo family now, which of the housewives do you like?

MARTYN LAWRENCE BULLARD: I'm madly in love with all of those Housewives of Beverly Hills — in fact a couple of them are my friends. Camille Grammer has just reached out to me and said that when she buys her new house she actually wants me to redecorate it for her. I'd love to get my hands on some of those houses because those girls seem to have a lot of money but not a lot of style going on. So I think they need some help.

PREMIER GUIDE MIAMI: Is there a particular Beverly Hills Housewife's home that you would redesign?

MARTYN LAWRENCE BULLARD: I think they could all do with a little bit of help, actually. Lisa Vanderpump has got great style. She's got two delicious restaurants — Villa Blanca and Sur — which are two of my favorite spots for lunch and dinner, particularly Sur. I feel she should translate a bit more of that south of France, southern Spain flavor to her own home. She's got a good house — a stellar retreat with an amazing amount of land around it. She throws the wildest, funnest fancy dress parties. We need to see more of that great style coming out of her own home.

PREMIER GUIDE MIAMI: Which of your celebrity clients' homes will you feature on the show?

MARTYN LAWRENCE BULLARD: Quite a bit — in the first episode especially, an emergency apartment I do for Sharon and Ozzy Osbourne. Emergency because they needed it done in about 10 days because Sharon signed her new show, The Talk, and couldn't commute from her house way out in Malibu — the one that's in this month's Architectural Digest — because she had 6 AM calls in the morning. So she got this apartment and needed it done immediately. The first episode centers around that, which is kind of hysterical and madness. The Bravo crew couldn't believe they got something so crazy to film immediately. That was reality TV at its best. I also have content in London with Sir Elton John and David and the supermodel Sophie Dahl, and then I do a very Cuban-inspired makeover for Latin star Daisy Fuentes, who wants to bring her Cuban roots back into her very contemporary home in the Hollywood Hills. And then there are celebrities popping up all over the place — Ellen Pompeo, Vidal Sassoon, all sorts of people. You're definitely going to get a quota of star glamour.

PREMIER GUIDE MIAMI: Was Sharon Osbourne hard to please?

MARTYN LAWRENCE BULLARD: Sharon is amazing. She and all the kids have become really close friends of mine. We've been away for vacations and Christmas — Sharon and I actually met on vacation in Africa on a safari that Elton took us on. When you get to know somebody really well — which I think is one of the great tricks to decorating — you can really start to interpret their decorating for them and hope that you end up speaking the same language. With Sharon and I, we've got such a good bond now. It may not necessarily be exactly what I want, but that's what you see in the first episode: Sharon's new apartment, which is very contemporary for them. Completely different from their mad Goth mansion during the MTV days and very different from the English/French country house I've done for them that's in this month's Architectural Digest. Sharon said, "I really want something new, something fresh, something modern — something that feels like Elton's but more white and neutral."

PREMIER GUIDE MIAMI: What are some of the screw-ups you've had on the show, and how many margaritas did you go through during taping?

MARTYN LAWRENCE BULLARD: No one's an alcoholic here, but God knows a little glass of bubbles at the end of the day does make it all seem so much better. I actually did have a hilarious client once who had a vineyard, and on our first meeting made me taste all the wines — but it was one of those abstract tastings where you didn't spit any of it out, you swallowed it all. By the end of the meeting I was completely smashed and couldn't remember anything I'd proposed for them. It was all a disaster. The assistant was smashed too.

PREMIER GUIDE MIAMI: Were there any major screw-ups?

MARTYN LAWRENCE BULLARD: However glamorous it sounds decorating for these uber stars and multimillionaires, we are a service industry. I may be at home in the morning having my housekeeper bring me breakfast and squeeze orange juice, but two hours later I may be on my hands and knees scrubbing my client's floor. Things go wrong. Delivery dates go wrong. I remember — this is a for instance — I did a hotel in Palm Springs and sent all the fabric for the draperies. All 65 rooms' worth of drapes were made. We sent them to a place in the valley to be fire-coated for regulations, and that day the fire-proofing place burned to the ground and burned all my drapes up with it. A lot of it just happens. I think the show helps viewers — and hopefully our clients — understand what we go through to make it as perfect for them as we possibly can.

PREMIER GUIDE MIAMI: What is the main purpose of the show?

MARTYN LAWRENCE BULLARD: Yes, we're all spending thousands of dollars of clients' money to create these beautiful environments — but the reality is there are amazing tips and design hints that you can take from this even if you want to spend $10. In one episode I have to revamp a hotel in Palm Springs very inexpensively, and one of the great tricks is to paint a wainscoting higher — like 36 inches — around a room. I put a deep red wainscoting in a white room and it automatically gave it architecture. That costs like $20. There are marvelous tips like that which viewers can extract and apply on their own budgets. This is also the first show ever on American television to show the real high end of interior design. There's something exciting about that, something funny, something amazing. But there are going to be fantastic takeaways for decorating that they can do on any budget.

PREMIER GUIDE MIAMI: How were you approached by the network for this show?

MARTYN LAWRENCE BULLARD: I had two other shows in the works, actually. But when I was approached by the Bravo team and found out it was full of such an exciting group of cast members — and as Jeffrey said, we're all friends. We've all been hanging out together for years. Kathryn and I have been on vacations together, Nathan as well. So it was really exciting to know we'd become this ensemble cast of really fantastic talent. All of us are very much at the highest end of our careers. The fact that they managed to find five people all at the highest end of interior design who would complement each other and who could all gain access from their clients — that was amazing.

PREMIER GUIDE MIAMI: Describe your decorating style.

MARTYN LAWRENCE BULLARD: I think my interiors are exuberant. They are absolutely eclectic because I live by the saying of the great Oscar Wilde: all beautiful things belong to the same age. I interpret that in my design by using things from every culture and every period — if they're beautiful, I mix them all together to create a very individual environment for my clients. And my main thing is that I believe modern luxury is comfort.

PREMIER GUIDE MIAMI: Will we get a glimpse into your home and social life?

MARTYN LAWRENCE BULLARD: You do get to see quite a lot of my house — they filmed me getting ready to go to things. During filming I was working very much internationally, so they had me in London, Mexico, New York, all over the place. Lots of scenes of me packing and leaving. But there's a bunch of my home life and social life, and a lot of very personal things happened to me during the course of filming. The Mayor of Los Angeles declared October 18 the official Martyn Lawrence Bullard Day and presented me with a big plaque. I also won International Interior Designer of the Year and had a huge award ceremony which a lot of celebrities attended — Sharon and Kelly Osbourne presented me with the award and there were performers singing. So you get a real taste of the all-rounder of my life, as you do with all of my other cast mates.

PREMIER GUIDE MIAMI: What was the biggest disaster you've had on a job?

MARTYN LAWRENCE BULLARD: I did a project in Mexico for Joe Francis, who owns Girls Gone Wild and Guys Gone Wild — part of it is actually filmed in one of the episodes. I had most of the furniture made in Indonesia or the U.S. and shipped to LA, then taken in lorries down to Mexico. One of the lorries was hijacked. I ended up having to do an unbelievable, gangster-like deal where I exchanged money with the hijackers to get my van of furniture back. That was the scariest thing I've ever had to do.

PREMIER GUIDE MIAMI: Were there any requests that you could not meet?

MARTYN LAWRENCE BULLARD: I once had a rather famous diva ask me to take a bath with her, which I decided to decline. Of course there are requests that come in — 80% of my client list is celebrities, so you get sometimes the most extraordinary requests. I had a request once to gold leaf the entire interior of a garage, which I had to decline because I thought if that ever got out to the press it would be the end of my career. So there have definitely been some diva-delicious demands.

PREMIER GUIDE MIAMI: What summer decorating tips can you offer?

MARTYN LAWRENCE BULLARD: One great thing — it's an English tradition — is that in English country houses they would redo the furniture for the summer with summer slipcovers. So rather than your brown velvet sofa for the winter, you'd have a beautiful linen in a fresh, pale green or white or some beautiful summery color. I also always do summer and winter rugs. I roll up my oriental rugs and in the summer lay down sea grass, which is fun and fresh and makes it feel more summery — and it's actually a really inexpensive fix. You can go to Pottery Barn and buy an 8 by 10 sea grass rug for $200. That's a really quick, fast, fun way of infusing some summer energy into your home. Another great tip: if you've got old furniture in your basement or storage, you can take sofas upholstered in outdoor fabric and put them outside for the summer. The fabric will hold up, and for the three or four months it's outside the interior will hold up as well, as long as you take it in during the winter months. You can create a real outdoor living space with real furniture just by having it upholstered in Sunbrella or Perennials or one of the many outdoor fabrics on the market.

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