On Friday, August 12 at 8:00 p.m. ET/PT, you can tune in to see the launch of TLC’s new 12-episode series titled MATERIAL WORLD featuring internationally-known and award-winning interior designer Courtney Sloane. The series features a team of designers from the Hamptons to the Hollywood Hills, including Jason Bell, Martyn Lawrence Bullard, Susan Cohen, Elaine Culotti, Vincent Jacquard, Jack Levy, Benjamin Noriega-Ortiz, and Bobby Trendy.

MATERIAL WORLD is an irreverent, voyeuristic romp through the spectacular world of high-end interior design in the homes of the superrich. It’s about taste, huge budgets, demanding clients and the high-end designers who serve them.

America’s east and west coasts are magnets for glamour and glitz. It’s here where the country’s most expensive and opulent real estate is found…with interiors to match. But who designs them? Who can afford to pay for their services and what do they spend it on when money is no object? TLC’s MATERIAL WORLD finds out.

When it comes to building, renovating and designing a home, even millions of dollars can’t buy good taste. And that’s where the designers of MATERIAL WORLD come in. Viewers will see them as they manage their high-profile clientele, catering to their every whim and weathering their mood swings, while still maintaining a vision and staying on schedule. It’s no easy task, as they must juggle meeting clients, creating design schemes, shopping for furniture and fixtures, dealing with contractors and even overseeing final installation and the finished product.

In each one-hour episode, the lives of high-end designers intermingle as viewers meet them on a professional and personal level, while getting a glimpse into the world of high-end interior design and the lives of their rich and famous clients. Viewers will see each designer in action, as they employ passion and creativity and pour their hearts and souls into each of their projects -- and also enjoy the ritzy lifestyle their work affords them.

MATERIAL WORLD is produced for TLC by BBC Productions. For BBC Productions, executive producer is Abigail Harvey. For TLC, executive producer is Kathy Davidov.


About Courtney Sloane

It was initially Courtney Sloane’s work in producing inspiring, dynamic environments for an array of A-list clients such as Sean “P. Diddy" Combs, Queen Latifah, Damon Dash and Jay-Z, and corporate powerhouses such as Sony Music, Walt Disney, Essence Communications and The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, that made people take notice of her extraordinary creative vision. However, Sloane’s unique and genuine sense of style and aesthetics have transformed her from simply an “interior designer” to a major "culturefuse" in entertainment, media and popular culture, an interior author who helps people tell stories about the places where they live and work.

For her many and varied achievements in the competitive world of design, Courtney Sloane has been featured on the covers and recognized by New York magazine (as one of its elite “99 New Yorkers of 1999”), Interiors and Interior & Sources magazines, House Beautiful (who named her “one of the nation’s top 101 designers” for three consecutive years, 1997 to 1999), the Decorating & Design Building (who named her as one of the “emerging designers of the millennium”). Sloane works have been the focus of coverage in The New York Times, O, Harper’s Bazaar, Marie Claire, Elle Décor, Hamptons, HG&C, Essence, Lucky, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Daily Variety. The Washington Times declared Courtney Sloane to be “way ahead of the pack… truly a designer for the millennium.”

In 1996, Courtney Sloane began a three-year stint as contributing editor at Essence magazine, dispensing advice and informational services in her monthly column, “By Design.” Another publication benefited from her expertise, when the renovation of Vibe’s Lexington Avenue offices won New York magazine’s Best Lobby In New York City award for 1996. That same year, Courtney Sloane won her first major award from Philadelphia’s prestigious Moore College Of Art & Design, honored alongside noted women designers Clodagh, Eva Jiricna, Debra Lehman-Smith, and Lauren Rottet. It was a significant commendation for the young African-American Jersey girl, in the company of senior members of her profession with decades of background experience between them. In 1997, she became a member of the Cooper-Hewitt Museum’s Professional Designers Advisory Committee.

As the work continues, Courtney Sloane has begun to “give back” to the community, via philanthropic activities and various non-profit ventures. After being chosen by DIFFA/Steuben as one of eight designers to create vignettes representing Steuben glass for display in May 2000 at the opening of the flagship store in Manhattan, she later participated in numerous DIFFA events to benefit AIDS. She was chosen to design the Arthur Ashe Institute For Urban Health annual commemorative award that honors contributors to sports, health and humanity. She serves as benefit chair of the African-American Design Archive of the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, Smithsonian Institution, in New York.

On the academic side, Sloane was educated at Rutgers University, the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT), and Pratt Institute. She has presided on the Pratt Institute’s Interior Design Advisory Board since 1999. She was Principal For A Day (a PENCIL program) at Manhattan West Art Institute and keynote speaker at their graduation ceremonies in May-June 2000, respectively. Her work was featured in several books (and exhibit) including Women Designers In the USA 1900-2000: Diversity And Difference, produced by the Bard Graduate Center For Studies In the Decorative Arts. She has served as guest speaker at many design schools including New York School Of Interior Design and was invited to do the esteem Hiller lecture by the Design & Environmental Analysis Department at Cornell University (where the topic was “Making A Difference By Design”).