Memphis designer on ‘Design Star: Next Gen’
Series’ premiere episode will air Wednesday
Movie star. Pop star. Design star? Last year, Architectural Digest magazine identified Memphis interior designer Carmeon Hamilton as one of “9 Rising Stars Taking the Design World by Storm.”
This week, her “star” power will become even brighter when she participates as one of eight contestants on “Design Star: Next Gen,” a new reality competition series on discovery+, a year-old streaming service from Discovery, the company that operates HGTV, the Food Network, the Travel Channel and other lifestyle networks. The premiere episode airs Wednesday.
“Design Star: Next Gen” was shot last fall in the Los Angeles area, with pandemic-era social-distancing mandates and business lockdowns in place. This means that the team efforts and group interactions that characterized the firstgeneration “Design Star” series — which ran from 2006-2013 on HGTV — were reimagined as mostly solo challenges.
Also, instead of traveling to diverse locations, as in the original series, the designers operate within an isolated, specially built community that Discovery calls a “Design Hub,” where, according to network publicists, the competitors will create “gorgeous spaces” within their own “design labs — essentially a house-inspired space that must be reimagined for each challenge.”
Applying her designer’s philosophy to these peculiar circumstances, Hamilton noted that the COVID-19 era, which has forced families to spend most of their time at home thanks to shuttered workplaces, schools and entertainment venues, should make people particularly interested in a program about interior design.
“Since everyone is home and taking a look at their own spaces, now is a great time to be inspired by design television,” said Hamilton, 35, who calls her Cordova-based design company “Nubi Interiors.”
“I’m a firm believer that our environment plays a huge role in the way we feel about ourselves and the way we interact with other people,” she said. “If you’re in an environment that is comfortable or inspiring or at least safe, you are likely to be living a more productive and happy life.”
For this reason, her design work “is one of the most fulfilling things I ever could do,” she said.
Born in West Memphis, Hamilton was a physical therapy major at the Universal of Central Arkansas in Conway when her creative re-design of her dorm room attracted admirers.
“Our dorms were cinderblock and concrete walls, and I brought in a lot of hot pink and zebra and changed the plan to make it kind of like a studio apartment,” she said.
With the encouragement of her fellow students, she switched majors, and graduated from Central Arkansas with a bachelor of science degree in interior design.
Out of college, she landed some fairly significant design jobs. For a while, she worked for then-arkansas-based Golden Livingcenters, which owns healthcare facilities around the country; she designed living and work spaces for the company.
She later worked as a designer and buyer for some large furniture companies.
In 2013, she and her husband, Marcus Hamilton, relocated to Memphis, and she started her own design business and a “lifestyle blog,” which can be found at carmeonhamilton.com.
As she expanded her clientele (largely through the 21st-century word-ofmouth that is social media), she began to achieve local and then national recognition.
In 2018, she was the first Black interior designer invited to participate in Arts Memphis’ designer showcase, an annual fundraiser. That led to a profile in Memphis magazine that created further national media interest, eventually leading to a call from the producers of “Design Star: Next Gen,” a revival of what had been one of HGTV’S mostwatched programs. (The first “Design Star” launched “when I was in college, and I was one of the millions of people who watched the show avidly,” Hamilton said.)
Competing alongside Hamilton will be designers from Atlanta; Colorado Springs, Colorado; Denver; Pittsburgh; Springdale, Arkansas; and two from Los Angeles. Network judges and “a rotating cast of celebrity guest experts” will eliminate contestants each week, until only the winner remains, to claim a $50,000 cash prize and the opportunity to host his or her own HGTV design show (”to catapult into the big time,” in the words of the program’s website).
Hamilton said she believes her participation in the series has made her a winner, whatever her actual fate over the course of the series (a fate she won’t reveal in advance).
“HGTV has an audience of 88 to 90 million viewers, so I knew this would be an opportunity for great exposure for myself and my business,” she said. “Win or lose, I will have eyeballs on me, seeing what I can offer potential clients.”