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.
A year ago on The Feminist Kitchen:
The missing link: A birthday gift for the ages
We don't have power until everyone has power
They traffic in delight: Meet Mel and Dave
Taking the architect’s view
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.
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