Chloe Mac Donnell

Chloe Mac Donnell approaches fashion as a cultural system, connecting runway shows, corporate behaviour and everyday trends in food and language rather than treating style as purely decorative entertainment. As deputy fashion and lifestyle editor at the Guardian, she steers coverage that sits inside the paper’s entertainment and culture pages but ranges from industry news to lifestyle features aimed at millennial and Gen Z audiences. Her work is distinguished by a mix of reported stories, historical context and close attention to how digital platforms shape what people wear, eat and talk about.

Fashion industry news and accountability

Mac Donnell covers fashion not just as spectacle but as an industry accountable for its treatment of people, animals and protest. In one prominent piece on New York fashion week, she reports on the resignation of the Council of Fashion Designers of America’s chief executive after he was filmed physically restraining animal rights activists at a COS show, foregrounding the activists’ perspective and the reputational consequences for both the individual and the organisation. The article details how protesters linked their demonstration to the use of wool by the group that owns COS and records their description of the incident as “scary” and “completely uncalled for”, giving the story the tone of an accountability report rather than backstage colour. Elsewhere, she writes about the French Commission for the Enrichment of the French Language urging people to stop using the suffix “-core”, using the dispute over terminology to show how fashion-driven slang and branding jar with official cultural guardians.

Taken together, these pieces show a journalist who treats fashion as a site of power, regulation and activism, and who gives space to institutional voices and campaigners alongside brands.

Runway, designers and luxury brands

Mac Donnell’s coverage of designers and luxury labels is rooted in explaining the ideas behind collections rather than simply listing trends. In her reporting on Prada’s design leadership, she highlights the duo’s minimalist philosophy summed up as “little ingredients but well executed”, presenting their shows as exercises in disciplined design rather than maximal spectacle.

She contributes to work on “outrageous photos that changed fashion”, drawing lines from teenage Kate Moss and Twiggy to Lady Gaga’s meat dress and a revived Versace moment for Jennifer Lopez, using iconic imagery to show how particular looks reshape both search behaviour and cultural memory. Outside the Guardian, her pieces for Air Mail include a feature on Biba that treats the label as a universe of lifestyle - from silk sheets to baked beans - rather than a standard fashion brand, and a column on audiences emerging from Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer” wanting a fedora, linking the film’s reception back to menswear.

Earlier in her career she produced detailed guides to polka dots, independent fashion boutiques and royal tour wardrobes, along with features on model mental health, giving her a long track record in turning runway and celebrity style into accessible, service-driven journalism.

Trends, lifestyle and digital culture

Much of Mac Donnell’s recent Guardian work focuses on how digital platforms turn niche ideas into mainstream lifestyle habits. Her piece on “breakfast pudding” charts TikTok’s role in popularising sweet, dessert-like morning dishes, describing chia puddings designed to taste like cookie dough, overnight oats resembling tiramisu and Weetabix reworked into something close to vanilla cheesecake.

The article sets dieticians, fitness influencers and home cooks against each other, using their arguments to examine where playful recipe trends run up against health concerns and nutritional advice. In her coverage of the “-core” backlash, she treats language itself as a lifestyle battleground, showing how endless micro-aesthetics (“cottagecore”, “normcore” and their successors) collide with institutions worried about cultural dilution. Her professional profile emphasises a particular interest in youth culture and content that engages millennial and Gen Z audiences, aligning with the way she charts TikTok-driven food trends and fashion language as part of everyday entertainment.

This blend of social-media fluency, behavioural detail and lightly analytical tone distinguishes her lifestyle reporting from generic features that might only list trends without interrogating their origins.

Long-form features and interviews across fashion media

Before and alongside her work at the Guardian, Mac Donnell has held senior fashion and lifestyle roles across newspapers, magazines and digital platforms, giving her an editor’s eye for commissioning and packaging stories. She has written extensively for fashion and women’s titles, contributing both features and service journalism that range from shopping guides to deeper dives into the pressures of the modelling industry. Her own site highlights interview-led work, underlining a habit of building pieces around direct conversation with designers, industry figures and cultural commentators rather than relying solely on trend observation. Professional bios describe a cross‑platform approach that spans print, digital, video and social media and regular collaboration with luxury fashion, retail and tech brands, reinforcing her focus on how fashion storytelling plays out across commercial and editorial spaces. The result is a body of work that combines long-form narrative, interviews and sharp, serviceable takeaways, useful for stories that need both context and clear hooks.