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"The often-gated community of interior design has been breached by some ambitious interlopers, thanks to Top Design, Bravo&amp;#039;s reality-show confection. For the dedicated viewer, Wednesday nights over the winter and spring were spent watching the triumphs and pratfalls of a dozen interior designers. A panel of judges, including ELLE DECOR&amp;#039;s Margaret Russell, whittled down the cast to finalists Carisa Perez-Fuentes and Matt Lorenz, who was fresh off a winning streak. The ultimate test was for the designers to create a loft for a discerning client\u2014themselves. Perez-Fuentes&amp;#039;s groovy bachelorette pad was decked out with a sunken mattress pit and op-art details. But it was the thorough execution and family-conscious floor plan that cinched the win for Lor\u00ADenz, who lives in Chicago with his wife, Veronica, and their young daughter. &amp;quot;Matt&amp;#039;s confidence never wavered,&amp;quot; says interior designer and Top Design judge Kelly Wearstler. &amp;quot;His ability to juxtapose furnishings created dialogues that were captivating, gracious, and unique.&amp;quot; Adds British film producer and guest judge Trudie Styler, &amp;quot;I especially loved those gorgeous orange chairs. He showed impeccable taste.&amp;quot; Jonathan Adler, the lead judge, caught up with Lorenz to discuss the decisions that made him TV&amp;#039;s top designer.  JA: Matt, tell us what&amp;#039;s happened since the Top Design finale? Are you a celebrity? ML: A mini one! Who would&amp;#039;ve known so many people watch the show? I&amp;#039;m recognized constantly every day; it&amp;#039;s really weird. I just did this competition to get a couple of clients. JA: Any second chapters in television? Are you going to be on The Surreal Life? ML: I was only on TV to do interior design. I don&amp;#039;t see it happening in the future. JA: Let&amp;#039;s talk about the amazing loft you did. That space is lodged in my brain. I love the way you took an industrial space and did a clever floor plan, making it into little vignettes. ML: I was conscious about how my family would use it; I thought about what makes our lives function. JA: With a child, I guess it&amp;#039;s a constant battle of order versus chaos. The loft has an open plan, but everything had a dedicated space. The foyer set the tone for the whole apartment; I breathed a sigh of relief when I walked in. It had a sense of symmetry and serenity. Were those words you thought about? ML: I implement symmetry in everything I do. JA: That was a debate on the show\u2014how much symmetry is too much? ML: I can do asymmetry for clients, but for me, if something&amp;#039;s off, it drives me crazy. JA: Your sense of order extended to the color scheme. I like your rigorous use of gray and orange. ML: Gray is my favorite color. I could live, dress, and eat everything gray. For me, being able to relax when I go home at night means living in a neutral environment. But you can also get drama with different shades of gray. I added the pop of bright orange because every space needs a splash of color and a little youth. And with my daughter, Lily, I wanted some playfulness. JA: What were your favorite pieces? ML: We had a few hours after the previous challenge to walk around the Pacific Design Center. I knew immediately that I wanted to use the orange armchairs for the dining table. JA: Those were Andr\u00E9 Arbus. You have a lot of Arbus! ML: I got a real 1940s vibe from the loft. JA: You approached it with a connoisseur&amp;#039;s eye. We have a saying at my studio: If your heirs won&amp;#039;t fight over it, we won&amp;#039;t make it. I never want to design just stuff. Everything needs to be extraordinary. I saw that in your place too. ML: I used the $150,000 budget as if I were spending it on my own house, so I only picked pieces I would live with and love. In real life, if that meant a $10,000 sofa, then I&amp;#039;d go without art for a few years to afford it. But for the challenge, I should have selected some less expensive things and more accessories. JA: It looks like you really splurged. But homeowners are better served by that. I don&amp;#039;t want to buy anything that&amp;#039;ll just &amp;quot;do.&amp;quot; ML: Exactly! And I don&amp;#039;t want to build a room just to get it done.  JA: Did you ever think about laying out the loft in a more modern idiom? ML: No. It has great bones, and I wanted to play that up. Although I could have gone more Christian Liaigre, which would&amp;#039;ve looked great. JA: But Liaigre might not have looked so great on TV. Did you think about how it would look on camera? ML: No, I was so naive. I would have painted everything gray. But I felt that you guys knew my personal style, and that you&amp;#039;d register it right away [if I had done something solely for TV]. JA: You didn&amp;#039;t dumb down your aesthetic for the show. It&amp;#039;s been my philosophy that I shouldn&amp;#039;t compromise my sensibility for anything, such as a licensed line. You did the thing you meant to do, and that&amp;#039;s what came through. ML: My five-year-old daughter is still asking for that damn pink room. JA: I want her room too. It was so cozy and cute. ML: It worked in the traffic-flow pattern. I thought a lot about adjacencies. If people came over, what did I want them to see, what should I hide? To me, the bathroom should be a destination. I hate when the bath is visible from the living area. JA: Was that an Arbus console in the bath? ML: Yes. But I thought the bath was the least successful room. I wanted more art on the walls, and I didn&amp;#039;t love the way the console felt in the space. JA: The scale was weird, but it was memorable. That&amp;#039;s one of the greatest things design can be. ML: I really wanted to use a Ralph Pucci vanity with a pop-up mirror, but I ran out of money. JA: That&amp;#039;s very sad. So, were the judges mean? ML: I&amp;#039;d rather hear the truth, even if it&amp;#039;s harsh. But you guys were always nice to me, though the criticism from some of the guest judges seemed a little too personal. JA: We all loved that grid of family photos. ML: The only art that we were allowed to use was family photographs or art that we&amp;#039;d made ourselves. I love black-and-white photography; I think it fits into any environment. In the foyer I hung photos taken by my grandfather that I had reproduced at a copy shop with orange ink.  JA: What were the cheap bits you bought? ML: Cheap? JA: What you didn&amp;#039;t splurge on but still loved? ML: The bed was simple and reasonable. The chandelier in Lily&amp;#039;s room was $50 at a secondhand store in Chicago. The wall brackets in her bedroom came from an art store; I put rhinestone crowns on them to blend in with the princess look. JA: Any glitches? What was the biggest challenge? ML: Trying to fit two bedrooms and make it still flow was hard. I wanted to do resin floors; that would&amp;#039;ve been the hottest thing. But I couldn&amp;#039;t have done the draperies [if I had to redo the floors], so I painted them black and saved my money for elsewhere. The hardest part was having everything in sync in four days, the sheer logistics. JA: It&amp;#039;s a miracle. After I do an installation, I realize everything I did wrong, so I tweak it. Did you use all the stuff you specified? ML: Everything I memoed, I used, and it all went into its specific place. I had no money to buy extras, and there was no time to tweak. I did a lot of research during our two-month hiatus. Most of what I picked out to borrow from the PDC was also at the Merchandise Mart in Chicago, so I checked everything out for size and scale. JL: You still had time to add a lot of personal details, like Lily&amp;#039;s double-L logo. ML: For the logo on Lily&amp;#039;s sliding doors, I bought letters from Pottery Barn and mounted one backward. When the doors are closed, you see an entrance fit for a queen. JA: Did Lily like her logo? ML: She doesn&amp;#039;t know she&amp;#039;s a brand yet. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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