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"Though interior design strives to make the world a more beautiful place, the industry&amp;#039;s inner workings aren&amp;#039;t always pretty. The second season of Bravo&amp;#039;s reality-competition show Top Design illustrated this truth with a behind-the-scenes look at the dramas that ensue when 13 decorators\u2014from aspiring to professional\u2014vie for a grand prize of $100,000. Among the fall program&amp;#039;s many highlights, including new host India Hicks and quirky Pop Design immunity challenges, were the edgy and often-controversial projects created by the ultimate victor. Ambitious, savvy, and innovative, Top Design: Season 2&amp;#039;s contestants faced a multitude of arduous tasks, the most grueling being a two-day decorating triathlon. For the last episode, judges Jonathan Adler, Kelly Wearstler, and ELLE DECOR editor in chief Margaret Russell appraised the work of finalists Ondine Karady, who was a set decorator for the series Sex and the City; sophisticated upstart Preston Lee; and Nathan Thomas, a senior designer at a top-notch Manhattan interiors firm. The decisive test was to transform a blank-canvas condo into a sparkling showcase for their creative genius\u2014which Thomas clinched with his artful rooms.  Adler recently sat down with Thomas to dish about the show, his winning townhouse, and launching his own design studio.  READ THE INTERVIEW &amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;gt;   Jonathan Adler: Since the show&amp;#039;s finale, I&amp;#039;ve had a lot of people call me and say, &amp;quot;I saw Nathan walking down the street,&amp;quot; and they were wary to introduce themselves to you. Do folks come up to you all the time?  Nathan Thomas: Yes. It&amp;#039;s cool. I&amp;#039;ve never really experienced anything like that or expected it. I just got back from Art Basel Miami Beach, and everyone was telling me, &amp;quot;Basel tov!&amp;quot;  JA: I hear that Top Design served as a springboard for you to start your own firm.  NT: Definitely. September 3, which I think was when the first episode aired, was also my last day as a senior designer at my former firm. From that point on, it was just me\u2014Nathan Thomas Studios.  JA: Let&amp;#039;s talk about your winning design. The foyer is what really did it for me, since it encapsulated the whole spirit of the townhouse. What was your favorite room?  NT: The dining room, because I put so much of my heart and soul into it. The idea behind the space was to take something classic, a Parsons-style table, and mix it with something more venerable such as a bone-inlaid klismos chair. You wouldn&amp;#039;t typically pair those two things together if you were following a rule book of decorating, but I liked the eclecticism of the combination.  JA: That&amp;#039;s become your strong point\u2014being unexpected. And the cloud chandelier made of paper plates was a bit controversial. Some people dismissed it as crafty, and others recognized it as sheer magic. NT: Yes, it was a little do-it-yourself, but it was the ace up my sleeve. I&amp;#039;d been trying to work with paper plates for the entire show. I also taped and spray-painted a table for the top of the stairs, to give it a graphic quality. JA: That sense of invention was a leitmotif of yours throughout the show. People will always look at that and say, &amp;quot;That&amp;#039;s Nathan.&amp;quot; NT: I&amp;#039;m glad you noticed. I repeated the tape-and-paint technique quite a few times for several challenges, like when I decorated my chair for the triathlon.  JA: What were you thinking in terms of color for the house? NT: I pictured the place as more of a cottage near a beach, so I tried to bring in that vibe by evoking the sea with grays, blues, and white. But as it progressed the house moved away from a completely relaxed, casual feeling and became more urban. JA: Why did you choose to leave the shelves bare in the home office? I thought that was an unexpected touch. NT: It was my salute to the sculptures of Donald Judd. JA: Wonderful. It was inspired by but not imitative of. So how much was your budget for the entire challenge? NT: It was $80,000 to $100,000, which was shockingly low to me, since I work in high-end interior design. The $2,000 budget on the very first team challenge shocked me just as much. JA: Your choice in art helps make the place look more expensive. What inspired you to create the drip painting in the dining room? NT: The drip painting just came to me. It&amp;#039;s a drop cloth stretched on a five-foot-square frame. But in the study, I went hog wild since it was such a great idea to take so many different pictures and make the room look like someone had lived there for years or that these were things people had collected throughout their lives. JA: Any things you wish you hadn&amp;#039;t done? NT: Using that giant chest in the living room; it was like a sarcophagus. The minute we installed the chest, I knew it was too big. JA: What do you regret on the show in general? That you weren&amp;#039;t nicer to me? NT: I should have been much nicer to Jonathan! And that horrible window display that I did with Shazia. The gray dress was bad news. I didn&amp;#039;t like the dress, and I thought I was going to go home. JA: Who are your design heroes? NT: Alexander McQueen, Marcel Wanders, and Philippe Starck. I&amp;#039;m also very inspired by classic designers like Larry Laslo and Mario Buatta. I learn wonderful tricks from them. JA: I&amp;#039;m really glad to hear that. It&amp;#039;s good that you respect people from different genres and with different points of view. Decorating is definitely going to be the forum for your bad-boy-ness, and I&amp;#039;m excited to see what you do next.  Looking for more Top Design?  Click here for all the contestants&amp;#039; interviews, photo galleries, and the Top Design Secrets of Style.   Click here to see the resources. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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