Food Network's Giada De Laurentiis' early wardrobe malfunction

Food Network host Giada De Laurentiis is justifiably proud of her Emmy-winning work on her cooking show "Everyday Italian," but she still vividly recalls the day she busted her buttons for the network in a very different way.

"This was awhile ago, I think during the second season of 'Everyday Italian,' and we were trying to figure out the wardrobe for the show," De Laurentiis tells Zap2it. "I remember for a long time they wanted me to wear button-down shirts and things like that, but it's hard when you're cooking because it's just not that comfortable when you move around. I prefer some kind of T-shirt, comfortable and cotton, with no buttons."

But comfort wasn't the only issue on one particularly mortifying day.

"I was wearing this pretty tight button-down shirt and I bent down -- in those days the oven was down low, below the stove -- to grab my roast out of the oven and all the buttons on my shirt just popped open," she says.

"Everything opened up. I was so incredibly humiliated that I went running to the bathroom. It was early enough that I knew my crew, but not that well. "I wasn't worried about what would wind up on film, because I knew that would never make it on TV, but I was just humiliated in front of my crew and cameraman. That was the last time I put a button-down shirt on for filming any of my cooking shows."

That's one of the reasons she's slightly in awe of the aspiring hosts she is mentoring on the current season of "The Next Food Network Star."

"It took me several seasons on 'Everyday Italian' to become comfortable in front of the camera," De Laurentiis adds. "That's why I think I can help them find the confidence to make a very quick transition, because they don't have much time. They have to do an inner search to figure out who they are, what they want and what kind of persona they want to have in front of the camera. All of them go on this soul-searching journey in completely different ways. It's fun to watch, but it's also heartbreaking."

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