‘We're the spine of the country': Design superstar Genevieve Gorder on what the Midwest taught her about money

Betsy Wagner
·Senior Producer
Updated
Genevieve Gorder hosts Bravo's home design series Best Room Wins
Genevieve Gorder hosts Bravo's home design series Best Room Wins

Ask TV host and design queen Genevieve Gorder if she’s a saver or spender and, without pause, she will tell you this: “Saver. I’m Midwestern.”

Gorder may live in Manhattan and travel the world, but she credits her Midwestern roots for shaping almost everything about her — from her penchant for saving to her eye for design. “We're the spine of the country. Without us, it all falls apart,” she told Yahoo Finance’s Jen Rogers in the latest episode of the interview series, My Three Cents. “You could cut off a coast, and we could still function. You cut out the spine out, we fall down. Soul music, jazz, and we all know how to make stuff. It's part of the personality of the Midwest.”

As a child in Minneapolis, Gorder learned to “make stuff” — and stretch a dollar —at home. Rather than buying a big house in the suburbs, her cash-strapped family stayed in the city and nabbed an old run-down Victorian home that they fixed up, lived in and then sold — only to do it all over again and again. With an emphasis on creativity over cash, it was the perfect training ground for the show that made Gorder famous: TLC’s budget-conscious home makeover series, “Trading Spaces.”

“There is no template for my job,” she told Rogers. “It didn't exist before ‘Trading Spaces’ happened. So all of it is kind of me with a machete, making the path.”

Genevieve Gorder in the reboot of TLC's Trading Spaces
Genevieve Gorder in the reboot of TLC's Trading Spaces

The path for Gorder has been long, winding and very fruitful. Since “Trading Spaces” debuted in 2000 (and rebooted in 2018), she’s been busy designing rugs and pillows and furniture and wallpaper, plus starring in television shows, including her current Bravo series “Best Room Wins.” Gorder hosts the show, which pits two top interior designers against each other to create the best luxury room for less.

Gorder has a team of people to help her with her projects and business. But she says when it comes to the actual design work, it needs to be her own vision: “I feel that being authentic is probably the thing I do best. And that means that it has to be in my voice and it has to come from these hands and this brain.”

My Three Cents with Jen Rogers is a weekly interview series that explores celebrities’ history with — and relationship to — money. Find it exclusively on Yahoo Finance.

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