The presentation explains the decorator design pattern using the example of a car manufacturing company, 'uselesscars', which initially faced class explosion issues when adding features to their basic car model. The decorator pattern allows for dynamically adding new functionality to an object without modifying its structure, thereby adhering to the open/close principle. The implementation in C# demonstrates how to utilize this pattern by creating an interface for basic cars and decorators for additional features, allowing for flexible and scalable design.