When a friendship needs a makeover
Former What Not to Wear hosts Stacy London and Clinton Kelly had a fierce friendship and a very public falling out. Then they went on tour.
Hi, readers! This week’s newsletter is coming to you…from the zine! In the most recent edition of The Feminist Kitchen zine, I published a new story about the well-worn friendship between Stacy London and Clinton Kelly, the longtime hosts of What Not to Wear (a makeover show I was on way back in 2008) and what it means to reconcile when a relationship feels threadbare.
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Addie
A decade ago, Stacy London and Clinton Kelly’s relationship was worn out.
The hosts of What Not to Wear, a makeover television show on TLC, were immensely popular, in part, because of their sassy rapport, but their friendship had been on the rocks for years.
“I challenge you to spend 14 hours a day with someone for 10 years and not need a break from them,” Stacy told a crowd of fans in November at the Lost Pines Resort in Bastrop, where the pair was hosting an event — together, as friends — that was part of a reconciliation tour.
I met them when they were still friends, but barely. In 2008, my ex-husband nominated me for a makeover on the show, and producers thought our story would be good for TV, so Stacy and Clinton surprised me in Austin and then flew me to New York, where they skewered my fashion sense and tried to teach me how to style myself.
Before I left for New York, I remember standing in the closet of my little South Austin apartment with Clinton, looking at a pair of stone-washed denim jeans I’d loved until the patches between the thighs had been worn threadbare.
“You really needed this,” Clinton told me, off camera. He was right. I knew deep down that I needed a hand figuring out how to style myself, but I was defiant because, as a good feminist, I thought it was my job to reject beauty standards and the idea that I should care about what people thought about how I looked.
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But after spending some concentrated time learning to love (and pamper) what I saw in the mirror, I realized that that’s part of feminism, too.
When I got home, everyone asked me about Stacy and Clinton’s friendship because people started to notice tension on the show. I’d categorized it as “they were tolerating each other.” After the series ended, Stacy blocked Clinton on Twitter, which thrust their private squabbling into the public eye.
I was sad to see their friendship crumble because I knew they cared about each other, but I had also seen how straining all this attention had been on both of them.
Over the next few yeas, Clinton’s star ascended via his work on The Chew, which aired until 2018, but Stacy had some health struggles and wasn’t getting the same airtime as her former co-star. She was also going through menopause and was pissed that more people weren’t talking about it, which would ultimately fuel her next chapter — and their reunion.
As the pandemic settled in, something changed.
They didn’t go into great detail at the event in November, but Stacy was going through a reflective time, and she had her people reach out to Clinton’s people and they started talking again.
The friendship, it turned out, was still there.
“We started as fresh-faced kids, and the industry wore us down,” Stacy told the crowd. “But it’s so fun to be back together.”
They spent the next 90 minutes finishing each other’s sentences, talking about the evolution of their friendship, their years on What Not to Wear and, yes, fashion.
As someone who regrets telling women what they should wear after a certain age, Stacy now rejects all rules about what people should or shouldn’t wear at any time in their life.
Clinton shared his own regrets about telling people that they don’t have a body for this or that. “The important thing is: Are you wearing something that is in alignment with what you want to get? Style is a visual language, and we want you to be able to speak so people will understand. We didn’t make the game. We just want you to know how to win it.”
This was my main takeaway from being on the show: that I needed to put myself together in a way that shows the world how I want to be treated.
The old adage about dressing for the job you want not the job you have also proved to be true for me. A month after my episode aired, after I’d gotten over my fear about being the best-dressed copy editor in a newsroom filled with reporters I admired, I got hired as the food writer, a career turn that catapulted me into the next phase of my life.
This is the kind of internal transformation that happens after an external one, Clinton told the crowd. It’s not “fake it until you make it.” It’s “be it until you achieve it.”
“Belief is nothing but a thought you’ve decided to keep thinking,” Clinton said. “So, what is keeping you from believing that you are the most fabulous creature walking on the earth?”
Stacy and Clinton said they hear every day from people who told them that What Not to Wear got them through difficult times. “Sometimes, it was the only show that families could watch together without fighting,” Clinton said.
Looking around the ballroom, I saw moms and daughters attending together, everyone dressed in their best. They’d followed the hosts’ rules about not wearing clothes that were stretched out and shabby.
Fabric wears out sooner than people realize, and yet we keep wearing that one T-shirt because of our frugality or our favoritism. The same is true with relationships. We put too much strain on them until they fall apart. And we are quick to throw them out instead of mending or repurposing them.
But change is a good thing. Taking a break is a good thing. Forgiving is a very good thing.
Stacy, on reconnecting with her best friend after all those years: “I felt a weight lifted off of me. That was a beautiful gift.”
Gosh, I remember this episode like it was yesterday. Just never understood why they straightened all your beautiful natural curls. It's so nice to see the full circle Clinton and Stacy have come both in their personal lives and in the fashion world.