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From sound engineers and screenwriters to celebrity makeup artists and stylists, Variety’s series “Ask an Insider” asks top professionals within the entertainment industry to share their must-have essentials, for work…and for play. In this installment, “Queer Eye” star Bobby Berk, whose debut interior design book releases Sept. 12, shares his must-haves for throwing a Hollywood-worthy bash, including customized party favors and compostable cups.
Over his seven seasons as part of the Fab Five on “Queer Eye,” Bobby Berk has made a living out of creating beautiful spaces, one kitchen remodel and flooring replacement at a time. But more than transforming a house into a home, brimming with personal style and individuality, is the added art of designing it in a way that makes anyone you invite over feel just as at home.
With only a few weeks until the official close of summer, we tapped Berk to share the five items he makes sure to have at his house before opening his door to guests — all of which can be reused or recycled to offset the waste that can often come with parties.
“Parties are so bad for the environment because there is so much single use things going on,” Berk tells Variety over a Zoom call. “So if you are going to do that, just spend a little bit extra more money to make sure it’s compostable so we can continue partying.”
Shop through Berk’s picks below, and check out more of his hot design tips in his debut book “Right at Home: How Good Design Is Good for the Mind,” now available to pre-order on Amazon.
Multi-Use Beverage Tub
“The tall, rectangular one has sheltering at the bottom so if you have bottles of alcohol that don’t need to stay cold, you can put that and other food things down there. But then at the top, you’ve got all your drinks readily accessible. You’ve got ice when people need it. So I think an ice bucket outside just kind of becomes a multi-use thing. And they have the wood top as well so it becomes a place to cut the limes as you’re having a Corona, it’s just a really multi-used station. It’s especially good in New York or small spaces if you don’t have space for a table and a liquor bar and a cooler. This becomes a 3-in-1 thing and I think it’s really useful for parties to have multifunctional items. And the cool thing about the tall one is you put the wood cover back on it and it becomes a table for when you’re not having a party.”
West Elm Streamline Outdoor Ice Bucks$139 $111.20Buy Now
Compostable Cups
“I would love if everybody just used reusable cups for parties. Honestly, I die when I walk into a party and I see a big stack of red cups because I’m like this ‘This is gonna get used once.’ Somebody’s probably gonna go through like three or four of them a night because they’re not writing their name on it and then it’s literally going to sit in a landfill for hundreds of years after they’ve had one drink out of it. So it bothers me but I know that not everybody has enough reusable cups for people when they come over — it’s a necessary evil. So to do a cup that is compostable, if it’s going to be single use, I think is the only way to make it okay. So I really want to get things like this out there.”
Tossware Arc Compostable Cups$16.99 $15.99Buy Now
Compostable Trash Bags
“There’s also a compostable trash bag brand that I use called HoldOn and it’s just like regular trash bags that you would put in your kitchen trash can but they’re compostable so they don’t sit there in a landfill for 1,000 years because they’re breaking down, they compost in like a week.
HoldOn Compostable Trash Bags$21.85/Month SubscriptionBuy Now
Personalized Party Favors
“I found out about these on Instagram. I’m the worst, I find so many things on Instagram. Like ‘Stop targeting me!’ and they’re like ‘Well stop buying the stuff that we target you with!’ I love a good reusable water bottle. When I’m on set or some event and someone brings a bottle of water and they’ve already opened it for me I’m like ‘No don’t open a plastic bottle for me.’ So I like pushing people in the direction of using a reusable bottle. Because if we all just kind of get in the habit of having that bottle with us at all times, we won’t be needing to use plastic bottles. And I love the color palettes of this: the green one, the terracotta, the blush. A lot of these colors to me are desert colors and I’m obsessed with desert colors right now.”
Custom Water Bottle – 500 ml$39.60Buy Now
Sonos Move Speakers (25% Off)
“A: I think they have really good sound. And B: I think for the sound that you get versus the price, it’s really amazing. Obviously there are other great speakers out there but they’re way more expensive than this.
I’ve been using Sonos since like 2010. When I had my retail stores, we needed music in them and back then you had to have everything hardwired if you wanted speakers and it was so expensive. I didn’t want to rip out ceilings to put new speakers in these stores. So I found Sonos and it just worked. I think at the time there were other wireless speakers out there, but they never worked. Sonos just always worked. And they still always work. I love that they have so many different speakers. I literally have that Sonos Move sitting right behind me on the shelf right now. And I like this one, because A, it works but it also integrates into all the other Sonos speakers in your house. So it could be like your office speaker or your kitchen speaker if you want, but you can also pick it up and, like the name says, move with it. You can take it outside, take it to the beach. And the battery lasts — 11 hours of battery life. The battery lasts long enough that I’ve never had it run out on me before when I need it.”
Sonos Move Speakers$399 $299Buy Now
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