THE DESIGN STAR

Hilari Styles tripped in some designer shoes and landed in TV stardom.

“Nothing in my life seems to be deliberate. I don’t have any triumph over tragedy moments,” she says. “I just stumble into life, and I think for some people it happens like that.”

Hilari and her husband, Cedric Powell, had just moved from Washington, D.C. to Dallas. Before Texas, she’d earned a fashion degree from Howard University and had worked in interior design.

A neighbor here asked if she wanted to ride with her to a cattle call for HGTV’s “Design Star.” So Hilari tagged on, bringing along her new puppy in a vintage bowling bag and wearing a green blouse that drew out her eyes.

She caught the producers’ attention and a spot on the show.

“I had never seen that show before I was on that show,” she says of “Design Star,” where designers compete in weekly challenges and are eliminated one-by-one. The grand prize is a TV show of one’s own.

On “Design Star,” she lived in a dorm-style setting with fellow contestants for six weeks of filming. After winning several design challenges, she agreed to join the cast of season seven, “All Stars,” which filmed in the seven weeks immediately following.

Some contestants were fans of the show living their dream, she says. Some practiced challenges before filming began.

But Hilari is just Hilari. Already energetic, she says she can turn it up even more for TV. She fell right into it, and made it almost to the finale.

“It made me realize that I’m a real design star,” she says.

“This means something to me. This is really an art form to me.”

The experience opened a path as a fulltime interior designer and sometime TV personality. She has design clients in Texas, D.C., New Orleans, Chicago, Miami and Los Angeles, although most of her design jobs nowadays are in the Dallas area. She also appears on local morning TV and radio shows.

Hilari lives in Winnetka Heights with her husband and daughter Haili, 9. They are renovating a 1920s house, the first she’s ever attempted for herself.

Could she be a lifestyle guru in the fashion of Martha Stewart?

“That’s where I see my brand going,” she says. “I love design, but there’s so much more to me: fashion, cooking, parenting, travel, anything cultural.”

We’re sure she will stumble on something.