Stacy London has always been a little ahead of the curve. As a fashion stylist and designer with her own QVC line, predicting the latest trends is just part of her job. But London is also one of the OGs of reality television—her seminal style show with Clinton Kelly, What Not to Wear, debuted in 2003, three years before housewives were all over our screens—and almost a decade ago she was part of the first wave of the menopause movement in which high-profile women began advocating proudly and publicly about everything from hot flashes to hormone therapy. “She was an influencer before there were influencers!” says her friend, Kyle McKeever, owner of McKeever Media.

Still, even London has to admit that when it comes to her next passion project, “I’m probably a little early.” That’s because she wants to become an end-of-life doula, helping people prepare emotionally, physically and financially for their final days.

“When I talk about it, it makes people uncomfortable,” she admits. “It’s the same thing as when I started talking about menopause—people would freak out! They were like, ‘You’re using scare tactics.’ And I was like, ‘No. I’m using prepare tactics.’ Because the more you talk about it, all those monsters under the bed become dust bunnies, right? You just have to shine a light on the things that feel scary.”

That’s a hard-won lesson for London, 56, who says she spent too many years “struggling with fear.” A self-described anxious person, London faced bullying as a child and in her teens because of her psoriasis, an autoimmune disease most often marked by prominent red rashes; London suspects that some of the treatments she endured to control flare-ups, including light therapy and cold tar therapy, are responsible for her now-signature, face-framing white streak, which first appeared when she was only 11. “It started off as three strands, okay? And it just got bigger and bigger and bigger.”

The scope of her condition also increased: London is part of the 10% of psoriasis patients who go on to develop psoriatic arthritis, which manifested as severe joint pain by the time she was in her 20s—pain that in 2019 resulted in her having hands so swollen she describes them as looking like an elephant’s. “I’ve had slight limitations my whole life because of autoimmune diseases. Meeting people for drinks and then going to dinner and then going to see a movie? That’s too much for me,” she reveals, adding that she spent years chastising herself for falling into the Gen X slacker stereotype. “I was so hard on myself about not being able to do everything, or about taking a boxing class and feeling like I was going to, you know, have the flu afterwards [because] I was so achy.” 

Learning how to properly manage her PsA proved a breakthrough; so, too, did her journey into midlife. “Menopause really kind of stripped away all of who I thought I was when I was younger,” she says, “and allowed me to be much more open about who I wanted to be next.”

Midlife Disruption

There’s a lot about who London wants to be in the second half of her life that has caught her off guard. For one thing, “I started dating women!,” she says, bursting out into a laugh. “I’m not gonna lie: It was a little bit of a surprise. But that’s actually much more common in midlife women than you would think. Maybe it’s because [some of us] start to find men intolerable!”

She’s also fallen out of love with the hustle culture that marked so much of her career, catapulting her from a fashion assistant at Vogue to one of the most famous stylists in the country, working with celebrities like Kate Winslet and scoring brand deals with Pantene and Dr. Scholl’s. There were books, like 2012’s The Truth About Style, and red carpet reporting gigs for outlets including Access Hollywood. And, of course, there was What Not to Wear, which ran for 12 seasons. “I would just push through to the point where I couldn’t push through anymore,” she admits.

Her psoriatic arthritis diagnosis—which didn’t come until 2014, more than a decade after she first started experiencing symptoms doctors failed to recognize—forced a reckoning. “I really had to step back and say, ‘Well, wait a second—forget about the psoriasis. How do I manage the arthritis, when there’s pain, weight fluctuation, referred tendonitis, referred bursitis?’”

In an effort to minimize her symptoms, London first overhauled her diet, eliminating gluten, dairy, sugar, alcohol and soy. “I was the most boring person alive!” she jokes. (She has since reinstated sugar, citing ice cream as one of her “vices.”) She also works with a rheumatologist for prescription medication and has pulled back on her social and work commitments, because of the fatigue and pain she experiences. “I have energy ebbs and flows,” she says, “so I’ve had to be much more conscientious about where I’m going to put that energy and what I’m going to put my time to.”

Many media watchers were surprised when London returned to television earlier this year with a new streaming series, Wear Whatever the F You Want, alongside her former reality show co-host, Clinton Kelly—but not because of her illness. Rather, it was due to a widely-reported rift between her and Kelly, which both stars have since called overblown.

The way London sees it, there was some tension between her and Kelly back in season six of What Not to Wear (“We were told there was a dip in the ratings because it didn’t seem like we liked each other,” she recalls), but that the two longtime friends “got over it. We really did. And the rest of the seasons were fine.”
 
Then in 2017, Kelly published a book—which London says she hasn’t read—painting an unflattering portrait of their relationship. “And it wasn’t until, you know, Clinton said, ‘I really want to talk to you about this [new] show,’ that I was like, ‘Why do you even want to talk to me at all?’” London says. “That’s when we had sort of the knockdown, drag out conversation of where we both went wrong. What I’ve learned in my life is that you have to do the work—there’s kind of no sidestepping it.”

Looking to the Future

Wear Whatever the F You Want debuted in April to strong reviews, with most of the praise heaped on the still-dynamic chemistry between London and Kelly. “It was a joy to work with Clinton,” she says. And while they won’t know until fall if Amazon Prime is picking up the show for a second season, London still has plenty of work she’s interested in: Not only did she recently launch a Substack, with an eye toward writing another book, but her podcast, Hello Menopause, just dropped its third season of episodes. 

Then there’s the whole end-of-life doula idea. London says she’s looking into getting certified, and sees this path as an extension of the advocacy she has done all these years not only for people living with chronic illness, but menopause. “There’s a lot to do around our fear of death,” she insists. “Why aren’t we having more fun with this? I mean, it’s the only thing aside from taxes that we know we’re guaranteed in life… I really believe that if we had a better attitude towards it, it would make living so much more valuable.”

Which is why London, who lives in Brooklyn with her nine-year-old Maltese-Yorkshire Terrier mix, Dora, has already started getting her affairs in order—while also making clear, “By no means am I done!” Instead, she is trying to ensure, “I have everything taken care of, so my friends and family don’t have to,” which means buying a burial plot, prepaying for her funeral and moving all of her investments into a living trust rather than a will, which typically leads to a smoother distribution of assets after someone dies. Then there’s the “trunkful of diaries starting from when I was 10,” she says. “I think I might ask my sister to just go ahead and burn those!”

She’s similarly unsentimental when it comes to her closet. Despite all her years in fashion, the only items she refuses to ever get rid of are “a t-shirt from every boyfriend I ever had,” she says, and a set of pajamas that belonged to her father, who died in 2018. “I spray them with his cologne when I miss him,” she says. “There’s something so lovely and comforting and reassuring about all that.”

Being kind to herself is what London is all about these days. She’s planned several bucket list-worthy trips this year, to places like Greece and Barcelona, and for her birthday in May,  “I bought myself an original Elsa Peretti vase pendant,” she shares. She has also adopted an everyday uniform of a suit with elastic-waistband pants, and traded in the stiletto heels she used to wear when darting around the streets of New York City for flatter shoes. “I just won’t wear anything uncomfortable anymore,” she says.

After all, as London marches into her next act, she’s still determined to stay one step ahead of everyone else. “I think my 50s and 60s,” London declares, “will be the most powerful—and maybe the most impactful—years of my life.”