| Los Angeles Times, Thursday,
June 24th, 2004
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A Domestic Diva in a Big Blonde Wig
By David A. Keeps
Brini Maxwell, the self-professed lifestyle guru and hostess of her
own retro homemaker program on the Style Network, is a self-made woman.
“You don’t have to spend a lot to have a gracious existence,”
declares the soignée stay-at-home seamstress, who in one episode
fashioned a collapsible cabana out of a bedsheet and two hula hoops.
“Don’t let people tell you that there’s a right
way or wrong way to express yourself. You have to find your own way,”
she says.
Maxwell certainly has. Dispensing useful household hints with a mellifluous
deadpan that suggests she knows her way around a cocktail cart, the
latter-day Doris Day has grown from a Manhattan public-access personality
into a national cable-cult fixation.
“Sex and the City” star Kim Cattrall and fashion designer
Cynthia Rowley have tuned in to the first 13 episodes of “The
Brini Maxwell Show,” and the next season is in pre-production.
Maxwell also has taught Conan O’Brien the fine art of fondue
on his NBC late-night show. With her plans to write books and create
household products, the 34-year-old domestic diva is shaping up to
be the next queen of décor TV.
Literally. The 5-foot-10 blond bombshell is the creation of Ben Sander,
a fashion designer and flea market addict who dons a wig and flurry
of vintage couture each show.
“I know that it’s a man playing a woman, but I believe
in the character, and she is somehow strangely comforting,”
says Leslie Van Buskirk, deputy editor of TV Guide. “I would
like her to be my neighbor, so I could knock on her door and ask to
borrow a bundt pan.”
Ten years ago, “The Brini Maxwell Show” character might
have appealed to a niche audience of gay people, observes Randy Barbato,
co-president of World of Wonder, the Hollywood company that produced
the film “Party Monster” and documentaries on camp icons
such as Tammy Faye Baker and Anna Nicole Smith. “Now,”
he says “drag equals ratings, and someone as sophisticated as
Brini can practically be considered mainstream.”
Maxwell isn’t the first cross-dressing cable crossover. From
1996 to 1998, World of Wonder produced singer-actor RuPaul’s
talk show on VH1. The recent success of Bravo’s “Queer
Eye for the Straight Guy” has also flung open the closet door
for Maxwell who may be taking metrosexuality to its logical conclusion:
If straight men are willing to take style cues from their gay counterparts,
why not take cleaning and sewing lessons from a drag queen? An articulate
one at that. One who speaks of “sequestered hideaways”
and confesses that “there’s something so soothing about
plotting your world on a manageable scale.”
“When I first saw the show, I thought it might be all kitsch,”
admits Heather Moran, the programming vice president who brought the
show to Style. “But it’s chock full of useful tips and
information for any budget.”
Now that the Style Network also plans to broadcast old episodes of
“Martha Stewart Living,” the contrast between the original
queen of style and a pretender to the throne says a lot about the
role of femininity in the commercial arena of home décor.
Both present an idealized alpha female: Stewart is so capable it’s
intimidating, the wonder woman with all the time in the world (and
an unseen army of assistants) who some say has been demonized for
doing business like a member of the old boy’s network. Maxwell
who cites “The Mary Tyler Moore Show’s” happy homemaker
Sue Ann Nivens (Betty White) as an influence resurfaces the playing
field as a man personifying a career girl who still has time to run
up new curtains – in a flower-power print.
Although Maxwell is certain she commands a younger, more urban audience,
this queen believes her time-capsule TV show presses an emotional
button in us all. “There is a yearning to return to a time when
we felt safe,” she says. “People are looking inward. They
want to cocoon and create a nice space for themselves. I think that
has to do with the current world situation. People are taking more
of an interest in hearth and home and hoping for better times ahead.”
Maxwell knows that she brings kitsch to the kitchen, but along with
serving up a diverting palliative for the stressed-out viewer, she
provides cultural stimulation for the cognoscenti – all with
a knowing wink. Few home improvement hosts would use British artist
Damien Hirst as the inspiration for a crafts project. Maxwell does,
making a wall hanging out of mirrored plexiglass and “ordinary
household pills” such as Ex-Lax, then reminding her viewers
to glue the medications right side up so guests can read the writing.
Maxwell got an early start as a homemaker. While living in a 128-year-old
farmhouse near Boston that her actress mother had decorated in the
federalist style, Maxwell built a dollhouse “out of a cardboard
box with a green velvet lawn and furniture made from old jewelry.”
“There are a few skills I don’t have,” she says.
“I’m not terribly good at welding, unless you count a
hot glue gun.”
In high school, Maxwell worked in a thrift shop. “I came away
with nothing to show for it except a large collection of clothing
and furniture,” she says. And a keen eye for midcentury styles,
when “even everyday mundane household items were really beautifully
designed.”
A ceaseless EBay bidder, she extols the virtues of a recent find,
the Kabob-It. “It’s a 1970s product that cooks kebabs.
You put your skewers into vertical Pyrex tubes that turn on a carousel
around a central heating unit,” Maxwell marvels. “And
of course it’s in a lovely shade of yellow-orange.” She
also favors Dansk teak ice buckets and enamel casseroles, and the
colorful geometric fabrics created by Verner Panton and Marimekko.
She even petitioned the Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt, National
Design Museum in Manhattan to do a retrospective on the work of Vera,
whose floral scarf prints and linens made her a household name in
the 1960s. “They were a little underwhelmed by the idea,”
Maxwell says with a sigh.
Five years ago, “The Brini Maxwell Show” was shot in her
12-by-24-foot studio apartment in New York City. “We made it
work,” she says, “but just outside of the camera frame
it was usually chaos.”
Now, Maxwell has her own candy-colored studio set and travels the
country filming segments for the show. This week she is visiting Hollywood
hoping to persuade “a certain ‘60s sitcom star”
to make a guest appearance on a future episode.
She’s partial to L.A. – “I love the big hair and
low-slung houses” – and has many suggestions for its residents.
Among them: “I think the look of Tuscany is perfect for Los
Angeles, because the cracks that you get in your walls from earthquakes
can be easily disguised by an Old World plaster effect,” she
chirps. “There’s a great website, www.fauxlikeapro.com,
that can give you tips.”
Maxwell maintains that it’s never been simpler to furnish a
home inexpensively, but “don’t make the mistake of having
only things that everyone else can have. Go to IKEA, Crate & Barrel,
but pepper that with things bought at flea markets and antique stores,
family heirlooms and things you make yourself. That is what gives
a room personality and soul.”
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