‘Steampunk’d’ Reinvents the Victorian Era With a Modern Edge

Get out your bifocals and tighten up that corset—you’re about to get steamed! Fashion guru and daytime chatterbox Jeannie Mai (The Real) hosts Steampunk’d, a new design competition series inspired by the Victorian-era style movement that’s sweeping fashion, technology and sci-fi fan conventions around the globe.

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“Steampunk can be exotic, eerie or whimsical as it embraces life as it was at the turn of the 20th century,” Mai (center) says. “If it didn’t exist then, it doesn’t exist in the steampunk culture.” Ten artists will vie for $100,000 in an eight-episode battle to hand-craft ordinary objects and scraps of junk into entire rooms for an English manor house—minus electricity and other modern conveniences, of course. “The creativity of the contestants is staggering,” Mai says. “It’ll shock anyone who can’t get through life without a cell phone and GPS!”

SteamPunk’d, Series premiere, Wednesday, August 19, 10/9c, GSN