Fashion experts redds up students’ couture at visit

Clinton Kelly doesn’t like your pajamas.

“This is my pet peeve in life,” Kelly told the… Clinton Kelly doesn’t like your pajamas.

“This is my pet peeve in life,” Kelly told the sold-out crowd Sunday evening in the assembly room of the William Pitt Union. “I had to get dressed this morning, so do you!”

Kelly, half the fashion police force of TLC’s “What Not to Wear,” shared his expertise with the crowd. He also staged a fashion intervention for four bedraggled Pitt students, each of whom received one-on-one advice from the style sage and a $100 gift card to Macy’s courtesy of the Pitt Program Council.

“About 20 years ago I was sitting in your shoes – not the pointy-toe shoes, and certainly not the Uggs, that’s for sure,” Kelly said.

As an undergrad at Boston University, Kelly had planned to one day be a weatherman. By grad school, however, he changed his course and got a master’s in journalism from Northwestern University.

“I haven’t written the great American novel yet, but I did write ‘How to Dress Your Best: The Complete Guide to Finding the Style That’s Right for Your Body,'” Kelly said.

For a while after school, Kelly wrote everything he could until one fateful day when he was flipping through an issue of Marie Claire at a friend’s house.

“I was reading it and the stories were things like, ‘How Many Men Have you Slept With?’ and there were pictures of women holding up signs with numbers on them,” Kelly said.

“I was like, ‘I want to write this stuff! This is ridiculous!’ It was total fluff.”

Half joking, half sincere, Kelly wrote a letter to the editor in chief of Marie Claire promising that if she gave him five minutes of her time, he’d give her 100 story ideas.

The letter led to an editorial position at Marie Claire, an advice column as “Joe L’amour” for Mademoiselle, and a job with men’s magazine Daily News Record.

Then one day an invitation to audition for “What Not to Wear” arrived in Kelly’s e-mail.

“It asked, ‘Would you like to audition for this show?’ and I just typed back, ‘Sure,'”Kelly said.

After the first round of auditions, Kelly wasn’t feeling optimistic, but after beating out nearly1,000 men for the part, Kelly joined his co-host Stacey London and began to film.

“I really thought we’d do 10 episodes, the show would get cancelled and I’d go crawling back to my job and say, ‘I’m not gonna be a star,'” Kelly said.

Instead, the show’s popularity soared with close to two million viewers every Friday night at nine, and another eight million over the course of the week.

The show follows Kelly and London as they ambush, or “hit” as Kelly calls it, an unsuspecting fashion failure who has been nominated by his or her family and friends. The nominee is surprised, teased a bit, and then offered a credit card for $5,000 to spend on clothes.

The only catch is that the nominee must agree to give up their entire current wardrobe and place themselves under the tutelage of Kelly and London for a week-long makeover.

Of all 175 nominees that have been on the show so far, only three have said no.

“One was in a band, so she didn’t want to change her image. Another one refused recently because her therapist talked her out of it,” Kelly said, as gasps of horror rose from the crowd.

But the most adamant refusal came from a woman who Kelly recalls locking herself in a bathroom after the “ambush” segment and called home.

“She’s on the phone and she’s saying, ‘I’m being held against my will.’ Then she comes out screaming the f-word. Then she didn’t show up for work the next day, or the day after that. We found out later she picked up and moved,” Kelly said. “Can you imagine?”

Still, most nominees, though hesitant at first, consider the show to be a positive experience.

“We’re the best weight-loss program there is because you start to feel good about yourself and start to take better care of yourself,” Kelly said.

Kelly keeps in touch with about half of the people who have been on the show, e-mailing back and forth and meeting for drinks with some of them.

“I get e-mails from them like, ‘What do you think of this sweater?’ and I’m like, ‘What? You’ve had your week!” Kelly said.

Kelly also says the show has had a measurable impact on him.

“The show’s been a real psychological journey for me,” Kelly said. Before “What Not to Wear”, Kelly said he never understood why people weren’t dressing better when it seemed obvious that a few small changes could help them “realize they’re cute.”

“I don’t think I always got it, but now I get it,” Kelly said of the self-esteem issues and psychological hang-ups that are prevalent among participants on the show.

Kelly also learned that to get a job like his, you don’t just have to look your best, you have to be willing to forgo any ideas of getting paid.

“I never took any job for the money. Never. I took every job because I thought it would be fun,” Kelly said.

Rather than financial gain, Kelly stressed the need for students to consider what they would love in a career and what they’re good at.

“If you do something you love, you’ll do it well and the money will follow,” Kelly said.