Who What Wear

About Who What Wear

Who What Wear is an American digital fashion and lifestyle publication, publishing at whowhatwear.com. Founded in 2006 in Los Angeles by former ELLE editors Katherine Power and Hillary Kerr, the site pioneered the shoppable fashion editorial — every outfit, product, and trend it covers can be clicked through to buy — and grew into one of the most-read women's lifestyle properties on the web. Acquired by the British media group Future plc in May 2022, it reaches 12 million monthly online users and counts 10 million social media followers.

History and founding

Who What Wear was launched in the U.S. in 2006 by Katherine Power and Hillary Kerr, two former ELLE editors who had watched gossip blogs take over celebrity coverage online and spotted the gap nobody was filling. Kerr had been an editor at ELLE in New York before freelancing in Los Angeles for ELLE, Teen Vogue, and Nylon; Power had been ELLE and ELLEgirl's West Coast editor. Their insight, as Power later explained, was simple: readers were spending all their time on computers consuming up-to-the-minute celebrity gossip, but no one was talking about the clothes the celebrities were wearing — and while fashion magazines would tell you what people were wearing, you could not shop a magazine. The site began as a weekly newsletter before growing into a full publication.

The shoppable model

From its earliest days, Who What Wear was built around a single commercial idea: every piece of content would be shoppable. Affiliate links send readers from an article about a celebrity outfit or a seasonal trend directly to product pages with one click, and the site has practiced its own version of native advertising since before 2007. As Power told TechCrunch, the difference is intent: readers come to Who What Wear knowing each piece of content has a call to action — they want to be inspired to try something or buy something. The model made the publication an early proof that editorial and e-commerce could be fused without apology, and it anticipated the creator-commerce economy by more than a decade.

Funding and investors

In August 2015, Who What Wear's parent company announced the close of an $8 million Series B funding round with participation from Amazon and Bertelsmann Digital Media Investments, alongside existing investors Greycroft, Lerer Hippeau Ventures, Advancit Capital, Mesa Ventures, and Double M Partners. At the time the flagship site drew 3.8 million monthly unique visitors. Amazon's participation was read as a signal of the tech giant's growing ambitions in fashion, and CEO Katherine Power said the company was eager to work with a partner whose goal — making things easier for the consumer — matched its own. The funding was earmarked for growing the content business, expanding internationally, and developing e-commerce products of the company's own.

Clique Brands and sister sites

Who What Wear grew into the anchor of Clique, the media group Power and Kerr built around it — known variously as Clique Media, Clique Inc., and Clique Brands. The group added Byrdie, a beauty site, and MyDomaine, a home-décor site offering fully shoppable advice, both in 2013, and later built the Clique Influencer Network, which counted tens of millions of followers. By 2015 the three editorial properties together drew 11.2 million monthly unique visitors, and the group's audience skewed heavily female, with 88 percent of users in the 18-to-49 age bracket. The company also launched a consumer-products division, beginning in early 2016 with a Who What Wear clothing collection sold exclusively at Target.

Commerce and product lines

The Target partnership marked a milestone: the Who What Wear apparel and accessories line, priced from $14.99 to $49.99, was Target's first retail partnership with a media company — and unlike the retailer's one-time designer collaborations, new Who What Wear collections debuted four times a year, online and in stores. The company later expanded its retail footprint with JoyLab, an activewear line created in partnership with Target. The commerce push embodied the founders' long-held view, in Power's words, that the business was always more than just media — a slow-and-steady strategy they had been building toward for nine years, in contrast to the growth-at-all-costs playbook of many venture-backed publishers.

Podcasts, books, and content expansion

Beyond shopping content, the founders extended the brand into audio and publishing. Hillary Kerr created and hosted the Second Life podcast, a weekly interview show about women who successfully changed careers; since its February 2018 debut it has drawn more than two million organic listeners and charted consistently in the iTunes top-10 careers podcasts, with guests including Jennifer Lopez, Jessica Alba, Drybar founder Alli Webb, Lauren Conrad, and Kendra Scott. Kerr also co-authored three books: Who What Wear: Celebrity and Runway Style for Real Life (2009), What to Wear, Where (2011), and The Career Code (2016), all published by Abrams — extensions of the brand's authority into print and audio.

International expansion

Clique took its shoppable formula abroad in November 2015, launching dedicated U.K. editions of Who What Wear and Byrdie with local editorial leadership — former Grazia editor Hannah Almassi took the helm of Who What Wear's British edition — alongside curated feeds from the global platforms. The expansion reflected the borderless nature of celebrity fashion content and the company's ambitions to replicate its affiliate-commerce model in new markets, adapting product links and retail partnerships to local readers while keeping the editorial formula intact.

Acquisition by Future plc

On May 10, 2022, the British publishing group Future plc announced the acquisition of WhoWhatWear, strengthening its position in the U.S. women's lifestyle market almost exactly a year after it added Marie Claire US. Future said the deal would make it the sixth-largest beauty and fashion publisher in the United States. At the time, WhoWhatWear reported 12 million monthly online users and 10 million social media followers, while Future's content already reached nearly two-thirds of American women online each month — 64.6 million — with one in three U.S. adults reached overall. Future CEO Zillah Byng-Thorne praised the brand's decade-plus record of making style feel inclusive and attainable, and said the combination would pair WhoWhatWear's direct advertising sales strength with Future's proprietary technology stack and operating model.

Audience and reach

Who What Wear's audience is overwhelmingly female and concentrated in the 18-to-49 demographic that advertisers prize. The brand's 12 million monthly online users and 10 million social followers give it distribution across web, Instagram, and other social platforms, while its email products and commerce integrations keep readers inside a loop that runs from inspiration to purchase. Under Future, the brand benefits from the scale of one of the world's largest specialist media companies, with cross-promotion across a portfolio that spans fashion, beauty, technology, and hobbies — and with the platform effect Future applies to every acquisition it makes.

Outlook

Nearly two decades after two ELLE editors bet that readers wanted to shop the celebrity looks they saw online, Who What Wear's founding insight has become industry orthodoxy: shoppable content, affiliate commerce, and creator-led retail are now standard across fashion media. The question for its next chapter under Future is how a pioneer brand keeps its edge as the tactics it invented become table stakes — and whether the combination of editorial authority, commerce infrastructure, and global scale can keep it ahead of the influencers and platforms that now compete for the same shopping intent.