Elder millennials have come to accept the return of millennial fashion. Welllllll, maybe not the low-rise jeans. But are they ready to accept the return of the king and queen of makeover TV? Amazon Prime is betting on it. That’s why What Not to Wear’s Stacy London and Clinton Kelly are back with Wear Whatever the F You Want.

In case it wasn’t obvious, the show throws out the old rule book that guided What Not to Wear and corrects the errors of their 2000s ways. That means less emphasis on telling people how to dress and a lot more on asking them how they want to be seen. You’re 40 and want to dress like Billie Joe Armstrong? A grandmother that wants to strut like Cookie from Empire? Instead of being encouraged to tone it down, be realistic, or dress “your age,” the duo says, “Why the hell not?”

This isn’t the same Stacy and Clinton. There was an intense falling out in the mid-2010s, a reconciliation, and Stacy had a total reinvention, leaving the pencil skirts behind and even coming out of the closet. The intent behind Wear Whatever the F You Want truly seems to be a more thorough understanding of personal style. They’re telling their clients on the show how to dress, not the viewer. Instead of jotting down rules, the hope seems to be that people will be more encouraged to play with their personal style and try new things.

It is a radical shift from What Not to Wear, certainly. How big a change, though, is hard to understand without looking back at the show and fashion landscape at the time.

As a quick refresher, What Not to Wear was one of TLC’s flagship shows, with a whopping 345 episodes. Each installment saw people nominating their “poorly dressed” friends or family members. Stacy and Clinton would surprise them with an offer to toss their entire wardrobe in the trash. In exchange, the poorly dressed folk received a brand new look handpicked by stylists and $5,000 of new clothes. On its face, it all feels pretty innocuous. A rewatch of any length paints a different picture.

Throwing on an old episode, the nastiness becomes self-evident. Friends and family dogging a person’s clothes on national TV, being secretly filmed so the hosts could roast the footage, getting locked in a 360-degree mirror only to be told how bad you look. It’s all a little gross, and that’s before you get into the way all the looks are size-obsessed. Every style aims to make the participant look thinner, longer, leaner. Taking up space? It’s a hard no, baby. 2004 Stacy and Clinton would gag at Gen Z and Gen Alpha’s love of oversized fits.

But in the early 2000s? WNTW’s competition included some of the most horrific reality shows to ever grace our TV screens: Bridalplasty, Extreme Makeover, and The Swan. These shows involved (and encouraged) plastic surgery, breast augmentation, and liposuction. Even back then, the programs faced heavy criticism for literally contributing to a rise in eating disorders. Add in Joan Rivers still roasting the hell out of everyone on the red carpet and Perez Hilton doing much the same thing online, only crueler and without the censorship. 

It was a cesspool of horrors, and all the horrors were body-image related, so of course, WNTW felt not just relatively benign but like a genuine breath of fresh air in comparison. The heart of the show was always much purer than its toxic brethren. But rewatching old episodes gives you the distinct sense that we’d never stand for such a show today.

So where does that leave Wear Whatever the F You Want? How different could the show truly be? The answer, it seems, is both very and not so much.

In so many ways, the show feels like the original in its comforting nature, but the actual content proves that both stylists have grown and evolved and are eager to embrace individual style. Each episode features a client who feels like they’re in a style rut. They have an idea of what they want to look like and how they want to present, but no idea how to make that a reality.

Stacy and Clinton then help them pull together the fantasy look of their dreams before sending them out into the world on a little excursion (anything from a gallery opening to a tattoo party) to give the look a test drive. The point is to provide the client with some space to say: does this still feel like me? Do I feel good in this? Does it feel practical? Then, it is up to them to determine whether to tone it down, switch gears, or plow full steam ahead.

Then, the stylists get back to work putting together more outfits that fit the theme, and the clients get to take home a whole suitcase full of new clothes to show off to family and friends. It’s everything you loved about WNTW without all the trauma of 2000s beauty standards. But at the same time, I have to wonder who the show is for.

TikTok is chock full of everyday people doing makeovers of their own, crowdsourcing to learn everything from how to stop just trying to look small or trendy to how to stop aging yourself with makeup. Is there even a desire for television content like this anymore? 

More problematic, however, is Amazon’s ownership of the show. The online vendor makes no effort to hide they’re hell-bent on doing whatever they can to maximize profit. For instance, every episode ends with a QR code to scan to shop the featured clothes. It’s a choice that exactly goes against the show’s very premise. 

Wear Whatever the F You Want isn’t about following trends or having everyone purchase a pointed-toe pump en masse. It’s supposed to be about actually encouraging individual style. Having a feature of that show be an easy way to activate everyone’s lizard-brained desire to consume frankly feels bleak as hell.

So maybe just as there’s no easy route to personal style, there’s no easy answer to how Wear Whatever the F You Want will land with viewers. The world has changed dramatically since 2003, with Stacy and Clinton changing for the better and the media landscape changing for the dystopian. Audiences can find plenty of charm and comfort in the show, but maybe turn it off before that QR code pops up.

Wear Whatever the F You Want hits Prime Video’s dressing rooms on April 29.

Wear Whatever the F You Want Trailer: