What Not to Wear hosts Stacy London and Clinton Kelly reunite after 10-year feud
Former What Not To Wear hosts Stacy London and Clinton Kelly have reunited publicly for the first time in a decade.
The duo appeared onToday with Hoda & Jenna on 28 September, where they revealed to the hosts that they had decided to put their highly-publicised feud behind them after growing tired of the tabloids continuing to stir up drama where there was none.
“After seeing the same clickbait story over and over and over on Instagram about how much we hated each other, I was like: ‘I can’t take this anymore.’ Because we don’t really hate each other. We love each other, as a matter of fact,” Kelly said.
Beside him on the sofa, London nodded in agreement as Kelly continued: “We have very strong feelings toward each other. 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.”
“Oh, I sobbed my eyes out,” London admitted of their reconciliation, later in the interview adding: “I let it all hang out. 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.”
From 2003 to 2013, London and Kelly co-hosted TLC’s What Not to Wear. The two were considered a dynamic duo by all outward appearances, but behind the scenes, it was reportedly tense between the co-hosts. In 2017, Kelly revealed that London had blocked him on Twitter. Earlier that year, Kelly released a collection of essays acknowledging his complicated friendship with London, writing that he “either adored her or despised her, and never anything in between”.
But after their heart-to-heart during the height of the pandemic, the pair said they “forgave each other”.
“I think part of that is, you know, what I said about evolution. When you grow up a little bit — and we did grow up together on television — there was a lot of points of pride that I don’t think either of us were willing to cop to,” London said.
“If you don’t forgive, you’re only hurting yourself,” Kelly added. “It’s the only way to be in the moment. If you’re always holding onto a grudge, you’re not living in the present.”
“One thing I’ll say about forgiveness is if you don’t let go of it, the famous line is, it’s like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die,” London concluded. “So do not hold onto grudges. Don’t do it. Find a way through.”
The pair also revealed that they were also planning on launching their first collaboration in 10 years.
“Now, we’ve decided, we have this great chemistry, we make each other laugh, we finish each other’s sentences, why aren’t we sharing this with the world? So we’re going on tour,” Kelly revealed. They said they plan on bringing “The Stacy & Clinton Show” to 10 cities for live audiences, kicking off the tour in Birmingham, Alabama on 5 October and wrapping up in Austin, Texas, on 18 October.
“We’re going to stand up and we’re going to talk about the behind-the-scenes stories of What Not to Wear,” Kelly explained. “Lots of goss!” London added.
“The big feud, we’ll go through that,” Kelly continued. “We’ll do lots of audience participation, like if people want style advice, our updated style advice.”
On their tour website, audiences are encouraged to dress the part, “If you feel like coming dressed as a WNTW mannequin from back in the day (structured jacket, printed blouse, dark-wash-mid-rise-straight-leg jean, pointy-toe shoe and statement necklace), we would not hate it.”
As for whether the duo will make their return to the small screen anytime soon, neither has ruled it out.
