Dirty Rush: What in the Love Shack Fancy is Going On Here?

Two Ts In A Pod with Teddi Mellencamp and Tamra Judge

In this episode of 'Dirty Rush,' hosts Teddi Mellencamp and Tamra Judge explore the surprising transformation of college dorm rooms into lux

Key takeaways

• Dorm rooms have evolved from minimal setups to highly customized spaces, often involving professional interior design.
• The trend reflects a shift in how students view their college experience as an extension of personal identity and self-expression.

Main topics

• Luxury dorm room design
• Student personalization and identity

Notable quotes

"I don't know if there were like interior designers doing it, but like some girls on my floor, they're like, everything was like totally decked out."

Conclusion

The episode reveals how college dorms have become more than just temporary housing—they're now personal

Transcript preview

Speaker 7 (0:00) This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human. I survived nine months in captivity, and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them. I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are The Survivor Files. Every week, I'm with survivors who lived through the unthinkable, abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced. These are stories about what it takes to make it out alive. Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Speaker 6 (0:36) On the new podcast, Solita, we share the messy reality of traveling alone as a woman. I can wait four hours for the next bus, or this random dude is offering me a ride on his motorcycle. I chose option B. I'm Julie Pinheiro, and I travel by myself because it's a rare space where I can say yes without asking anyone else first. I'm on a mission to reclaim the word solita, trading the pity for possibility. Listen to Solita on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Speaker 1 (1:11) If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home. Pro Society is a weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse. Each week, we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and pop culture with your favorite writers, book talk creators, and plenty of overthought opinions. Yeah, Speaker 8 (1:34) I'm obsessed. Speaker 1 (1:35) I'm obsessed. Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Speaker 4 (1:42) I'm Hoda Kotb, host of the podcast Joy 101 with Hoda Kotb. You know, I'm always searching for inspiration and useful tools to maximize joy. Like when my friend Henry Winkler offered advice to aspiring actors and really anybody hoping to stand out. You're not hired just to fill time and space. You're hired to fill the space with you. Listen to Joy 101 with Hoda Kotb on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Speaker 8 (2:13) Welcome to Dirty Rush, the truth about sorority life, with your hosts, me, Gia Giudice, Daisy Speaker 5 (2:19) Kent, Speaker 8 (2:19) and Speaker 5 (2:19) Jennifer Kessler. Welcome to Dirty Rush. Hi guys, I am Jen Fessler, joined by Daisy Kent and Joan Vasos, and we are Dirty Rush. Today we are here to talk all things dorm rooms. So how do we get from tapestries and beer bottles to tiny mansions? It is over the top. We need to know how this happened. We need to know why this happened. We need to know the dirty, dirty details. Speaker 5 (2:53) Daisy, Joan, what do you think about what is going on? I don't know, Daisy, you're closer to this maybe than Joan and I are. Was this going on when you were Speaker 8 (3:01) back in a dorm? I feel like it definitely was. I don't know if there were like interior designers doing it, but like some girls on my floor, they're like, everything was like totally decked out. Like their pillows had like their initials on it. Like, and I remember I just got to college and we had like a bedspread and they brought all my clothes and then we went. After we saw my dorm room, then me and my parents went and like looked around and me and my roommate like color like coded it, but we didn't go like super all out. Like I think our dorm room was still really cute, but it wasn't like anything like super crazy. Speaker 5 (3:36) I mean, that was definitely Joan. What was your experience? That was not mine. Speaker 3 (3:40) Not at all. I want to do over, first of all, because I showed up with my comforter and all my clothes. I didn't know my roommate. We may have had one chat on the phone. It's not like now where you just link up on social media and it's so easy to get to know each other. And actually each other's style, really, because you can see from their Instagram what kind of person they are or if they're going to match your style. I remember I just showed up with bare minimum, but I'm also thinking about my daughters. I moved two daughters and two sons into dorms. I mean, you know, they're in their 30s. So that wasn't that that long ago. And it wasn't this big of a deal. It was bigger, but not this big. When Speaker 5 (4:16) I moved in, my first school was Boston University. Then I transferred to UT. I don't think my parents even slowed down when they threw me out Speaker 1 (4:23) of Speaker 5 (4:23) that car. I don't remember setting shit up. I don't remember like, so I, when I did it for Rachel, I don't know that we hired an interior designer. It was right after COVID. So she was able to get her own room. But I remember doing, they had that wall. They just got that wallpaper, that peel and stick. And I'm like, so wait, you want me to put wallpapers, wallpaper up on these bricks? And I was okay, whatever. Yeah, I did the best I could. I don't, her room was adorable. It did not look like what we are seeing now though. Oh my gosh, I was never aware of that, putting wallpaper over the bricks. That's honestly smart. It's a great idea. I know. I know. It was big. Well, we have our first guest here, you guys. And I'm very excited to talk to her. So let us please bring in Amy Joyce. I Speaker 8 (5:12) can already tell you're just so stylish. Yeah. Speaker 2 (5:15) I was thinking that too, Daisy. We are literally in the middle of Mexico. So getting Wi-Fi is just, it's a whole, you know, so yeah. How are you? We're well. Speaker 5 (5:25) Thank you so much for joining us. Speaker 3 (5:26) Yeah. You must be on vacation. Thank you for being here. Speaker 2 (5:30) Well, I come here to source for the business. Oh, there are some incredible like artists and artisans and just all sorts of things. Speaker 5 (5:40) Amy, I'm sorry. I'm going to interrupt. You come to, you go to Mexico to source for dorm rooms? No. Speaker 2 (5:46) So I am my, Amy Joyce designs is a full service interior design firm. So that is like, I, we specialize in luxury remodels, new construction, you know? Yes. So. I source for all sorts of projects, obviously, that we have going on. And this particular dorm room, obviously, was a whole thing. It was amazing. It was kind of honestly like a one-off project. The client that asked me to do it, their daughter was going off to school. It's their first child to leave the house. She actually has impeccable taste, the mom. And she pretty much just called me and she was like, I can't handle this. Like, I need you to come up with the design, implement, bring your team to install, do all the things. So it was a start to finish and it was somewhat fast and furious. We started on this about five and a half weeks before we actually installed, which is kind of, everything in that room was completely custom. Was that the first time that you did this? That was the first time I had done it. I had been pushing the dorm design for a few months. I knew also that I was going to be very intentional with the projects that I took on. Truthfully, a lot of people just don't know what this, you know, cost. I want to make sure it's on brand. For me, this was just a lot of fun because they clearly love color and pattern. And their daughter was just, I mean, she had some influence. So to me, my gift is being able to spend time with the client and really being able to kind of pull some things, right? Like just as a designer, when I'm meeting someone in their home and asking the questions and I can see how their space operates, you know, do they have children, pets, you know, all the things. And with this, it was a little bit different because I didn't have any of that. So everything was pretty much virtual. I mean, I didn't even actually meet this lady until we installed the day of. Now we have mutual friends and she knows some of my other clients, you know, that we've worked with. But she just, it's so much about trust and just, you know, for me, like the design and the execution of the design, but also getting people to understand just visually, you know, we create like design boards where we're very specific. And this is what's going here. We do AutoCAD renderings. Speaker 5 (8:20) Oh, my God. Amy, does any of this seem, I'm sorry to interrupt you, but does any of this seem for a dorm room for you as the designer? Does it feel a little over the top? I don't know if you have, if you went, you were ever in a dorm, if you went to a school where you did any of this, clearly you have the taste for it. But does any of this feel to you when someone calls you and says, listen, design it, do. CAD, whatever it's called, you just said, install it, custom it. Like, are you like, Speaker 2 (8:47) what are you talking about? Probably not because I'm very much a maximalist anyway. So, and truthfully, you know, I've been in this industry for 13 years. So the projects that