More than a decade after TLC’s “What Not to Wear” hung up its final structured jacket and statement necklace in 2013, style gurus Stacy London and Clinton Kelly are hosting a new makeover show called “Wear Whatever the F You Want.”
It’s all in the title: This new show will take a completely different approach to wardrobe transformation. This time around, there’s no secret filming of unwitting style offenders, no ambush makeovers and zero outfit shaming.
Instead, the new show is about empowering people to discover and embrace their unique style, even if their dream looks don’t follow any conventional fashion guidelines.
“We are no longer applying rules that come from our perspective,” London tells TODAY.com. “We are asking our clients what their dream style is, why they haven’t been able to achieve it and really help them along the way and guide them, rather than make it about geometry or looking thinner.”
A new premise…
London says she and Kelly don’t see themselves as style experts but as “fairy godmothers,” helping people express themselves through fashion.
That’s not to say there’s anything wrong with some good old color, texture, pattern and shine — or that “What Not to Wear” standby, the pointy-toe shoe.
It’s just that now, London and Kelly are digging a little deeper.
“Like, pointy-toe shoes do make your legs look longer, but why do you want to wear a pointy-toe shoe? What’s the style that you’re going for? What do you want to communicate to other people?” London says. “So we talk to them pretty significantly about what’s holding them back psychologically.”
Eight clients from all walks of life nominated themselves for the show’s first season, which premiered on Prime Video April 29, including a young mom hoping to reclaim her style identity, a grandmother and breast cancer survivor discovering her “inner diva” and a young transgender man exploring style identity.
Prime
In each episode, the client puts together their own dream outfits from a curated closet, then road tests the looks at an event in the real world. All the while, Kelly and London are rooting them on without judgment.
“Our job was to make it as safe as possible, and we were there every step of the way,” Kelly tells TODAY.com.
After clients try out their initial fantasy looks, they have the opportunity to refine their style further and to brainstorm with Kelly and London what outfits might work for them in their daily lives.
This process of collaboration with each client is “a lot closer to what stylists do in real life,” Kelly says.
… And a long-awaited reunion
With their bubbly on-screen chemistry, the co-hosts seem to be picking up right where they left off from their “What Not to Wear” days.
But for years after the TLC show ended, there were rumors of a feud between the two, fueled partly by comments Kelly made about working with London in his 2017 collection of essays, “I Hate Everyone, Except You.”
“For the first five years we worked together, I either adored her or despised her, and never anything in between,” he wrote at the time.
He also wrote that “there’s a part of me that will love Stacy forever, and a part of me that would be just fine if I never saw her again for the rest of my life.”
The same year, London blocked Kelly on Twitter, which Kelly said at the time felt like “getting a little slap in the face.”
But all that is clearly behind them now. The pair announced their reconciliation in 2023 and said they had worked through any sticking points in their relationship.
“So I reached out to Stacy and I was like, ‘Can we put this behind us? Let’s talk it out.’ And we had a really emotional conversation. It was during the pandemic, sort of as the pandemic was ending. And we just talked through it all,” Kelly said during a joint visit to TODAY with London in September 2023.
“Oh, I sobbed my eyes out,” London recalled, saying she “let it all hang out” as she and Kelly made up.
“I told Clinton everything that made me sad, everything that hurt me, every way I thought I hurt him. All the petty grudges, all the stupid crap,” she said.
The pair kicked off their renewed collaboration with The Stacy & Clinton show, a multi-city live tour that ran from October to November 2023, in which they shared behind-the-scenes stories from “What Not to Wear” and offered updated style advice to audience members.
And with “Wear Whatever the F You Want,” it’s clear they are back to finishing each other’s sentences.
Teaming up again for the new show “was like riding an old bicycle,” Kelly says. “Stacy, I’m the old bicycle. You jumped on —”
“I jumped on your back,” London chimes in with a laugh. “We really, really enjoyed our time together … For what everybody has said, and all the clickbait and all the press and all of that silly stuff, we work really well together, and we just know how to do it.”
She adds that this time around, she and Kelly were “just happier on the set.”
“We’re both older, we’re in a different place,” she says. “I just feel like this was a real, true collaboration.”
All eight episodes of “Wear Whatever the F You Want” are available to stream on Prime Video.
