What Not to Wear duo Stacy London & Clinton Kelly reunite for a stylish new series

Back in 2003, TLC debuted a series in which regular people nominated by friends and family to receive a much-needed makeover from stylists Clinton Kelly and Stacy London. Like Trading Spaces but with clothing instead of home renovations, What Not to Wear struck a chord with viewers, running for 10 hit seasons.

Kelly and London eventually went their separate ways, but are now reuniting more than a decade later for a show in a similar vein, Wear What the F You Want.

Not merely a rehash of their earlier project, this series puts the onus on the folks they’re assisting. “With a fresh perspective that celebrates personal expression over outdated style rules, they empower individuals to live out their fashion fantasies and discover their style truth,” notes Prime Video’s synopsis.

“It’s really about if you could take away all the voices who have been telling you your entire life, ‘You can’t wear this because X, you shouldn’t wear this because Y, you look terrible in this because Z,’ ” Kelly explained in a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly. “If you could remove all of those voices from your head, how would you be dressing? That’s really at the crux of this new show. We’re not here to tell you whether you look good or not. It’s, let us help you create your dream style. It’s not just like, ‘Oh, wear this because it’s in fashion.’ No, wear this because it’s who you are at your core.”

Kelly, who hatched this concept before contacting London about joining him, revealed that he came up with the idea when a producer encouraged him to reboot What Not to Wear. “I said, ‘Oh my God, the world has changed so much and I have changed so much,’” he reflects. “The only style show I would do now would have to be called Wear Whatever the F*** You Want. And then I thought, ‘That’s a good name for a show.’”

Their working relationship had become somewhat fraught after 10 seasons of What Not to Wear, but any hatchets the two might have held onto were buried a few years back, when they hit the road for a 10-city live tour in 2023.

“Rumours of our divorce have been greatly exaggerated,” added London. “If you were chained to somebody for 10 years on one show every single day, you might want to take a break. Most married couples cannot even say that they had the relationship that we had.”

While their relationship has evolved, so too has the impetus behind their makeovers. “It’s a 180,” London said. “It’s almost like the antidote to What Not to Wear. It was very important to us to look at the cultural shifts that have taken place and to become less experts and more cheerleaders.”

The big difference between this new show and their earlier one was that they’re not dressing the participants, but helping them bring out their own inner fashionistas. “What was so interesting about this show was that meeting place between somebody’s personal style and making sure that they had a glimmer in their eye when they tried on the clothes,” said London. “It needed to make them feel as excited as we wanted them to feel.”

Added Kelly: “We let our clients lead us. We’re like, ‘You tell us what shoe you want to go with this dress. You tell us what accessories you want.’ ”

The series premiere of Wear Whatever the F You Want begins streaming on Tuesday, April 29 on Prime Video