Trinny and Susannah, the presenters of the noughties fashion TV hit What Not to Wear, would be cancelled if the show was made today, their daughters have said.
Trinny Woodall and Susannah Constantine starred in the BBC fashion makeover series, in which they dispensed brutally honest style tips, between 2001 and 2007.
Woodall (left) and Elichaoff at the V&A summer party in 2023. Photograph: Richard Young/ShutterstockWoodall’s daughter, Lyla Elichaoff, told Tatler in an interview for the magazine’s cover story: “I think they would be cancelled if the show was made now. You can’t really speak to people like that any more, and say things like: ‘You’re so ugly.’”
Although she and Constantine’s daughter, Esme Bertelsen, both say they have never watched the show, they recall growing up and seeing people stop their mothers in the street for photos while they travelled around the world on shoots.
Elichaoff, who is a student at IE University in Madrid, recalled: “It was in some country in Europe, but I can’t remember which. This woman wanted to look like Hannah Montana, and no one knew who that was apart from me, so I got to help.”
Both daughters said their mothers had refrained from meting out to them the withering criticism for which the show was famed. Bertelsen, 23, said she was given “free rein”, while Elichaoff, 21, said the one red line was ripped jeans, but she was mostly allowed to develop her own style and “make really bad mistakes”, citing Topshop skinny jeans as particularly regrettable.
Both say they like to source vintage clothes on secondhand shopping apps such as Vinted and Depop, which Bertelsen, who works as an artist management specialist at Robbie Williams’ talent agency, Williams Godrich, said was “a massive interest”.
She said her preferred style formula was to “wear something really simple, then put loads of jewellery on it and a handbag to elevate it”, adding: “I guess that’s actually one thing my mum taught me.”
Asked whether the pair would consider a reboot of the classic show, potentially titled Esme and Lyla: What Not to Wear, Elichaoff said: “I’ve never thought about it … I think that’s their thing.”
Bertelsen added: “They were so similar, but so opposite. It really worked, their dynamic. I feel like we are just too similar?”
Elichaoff agreed: “We’d be too anxious.”