You Are What You Wear is a brand new, feel-good series sees presented by Rylan Clark-Neal and featuring five fabulous stylists, including our very own Darren Kennedy.
Held in the 'department store of dreams', this show is all about getting how you look on the outside to match how you feel on the inside. The five fabulous stylists will be tasked with uplifting a diverse range of customers seeking to reinvent their wardrobes.
"This is an absolute dream show to work on, I'm not going to lie," Darren tells us over the phone.
"I started the process of this whole journey back in January 2019 when I was up to my eyeballs in Dancing with the Stars. Dancing was taking up every hour of the day but, at the same time, I was doing calls at night about this potential new show. So now that it's finally come together, I'm really excited."
There has always been an undeniable appetite for makeover shows. Whether it be Queer Eye, What Not to Wear, Trinny & Susannah, How to Look Good Naked, or Extreme Makeover - audiences crave a good 'reveal' scene.
In saying that, not all shows get it right. In the past, some makeover shows have been criticised for being too vacuous and sometimes even degrading, focusing on the contestants' physical transformation more than the person themself.
For Darren, finding the substance of the story was just as important as the style.
"That was very important to me on a personal level. I think the last time that BBC One had a fashion show was 2005 and times have changed so much since then. In 2020, we want to bring humanity to the show, and look at the wider impact. What someone is wearing is really a reflection of what's going on inside them."
"The transformation is the visual," he continued. "But what's going on with them in the background will be the story. Everyone's story is different."
In each episode, four customers will visit the department store and enter a room of mirrors where they will be asked to look at themselves and describe what they see. During this, the style squad - Darren Kennedy, Joey Bevan, Kat Farmer, Lucie Clifford, and Nana Acheampong - will be working in the background, deciding who is the best fit for that customer to work with.
"You would be surprised by how many people haven't looked at themselves in the mirror in years," says Darren.
"It was really emotionally tough. At the heart of everything I do and what I enjoy, is people. Working with people is what I get the most from but you're also investing a lot of yourself and, at the end of a day of laughing and crying, you're exhausted - you're putting everything into it."
The founder of his own male grooming range, Darren's passion for style has led to his own contemporary suiting and outerwear line with Irish tailor Louis Copeland, which has produced six sell-out collections. Safe to say he knows the importance of a good wardrobe.
"Fashion goes part in parcel with understanding and accepting who you are and your identity," says Darren. "It's a very powerful thing because if you lose your identity, you can lose yourself."
"One of the men that I worked with on the show, who was in his late 50s or early 60s, had worked in the military all of his life so he spent years in uniform, and so he finally reached a stage in his life where he was no longer working and he had to make choices about what he was going to wear every day.
"He really struggled with that because he wasn't 21 but he had lots of life in him and took care of himself but he was totally lost. It was amazing to work with him, he had such an appetite for it."
You Are What You Wear airs on BBC One on Thursday, June 11 at 8pm.
