Clare Stephenson
Clare Stephenson focuses on matter-of-fact shopping stories that show readers exactly which fashion and beauty products are worth buying, and why. She covers fashion, skincare, haircare and makeup through tested guides and brand reviews, balancing trend, performance and price across high street and premium ranges. She works as Senior Fashion and Beauty e-commerce writer across Cosmopolitan, ELLE and Harper’s Bazaar, building a beat around practical, evidence-led product recommendations.
Polished and practical fashion staples for every budget
Stephenson’s fashion coverage centres on polished staples and seasonal pieces that are easy to wear and clearly priced, rather than runway commentary or brand news. Her guides break down trends like wrap skirts and knitted cardigans into specific styles, each framed by fit, comfort and cost, with price points starting from the mid-£20s. She repeatedly highlights “wear-with-everything” items such as blazers, using concise descriptions and outfit suggestions to show how a single piece can work across different settings. Product selection in these fashion stories mirrors her wider e-commerce approach: she mixes accessible and mid-range brands, emphasises versatility, and keeps the focus on how the garments look and feel in everyday use.
Her previous work in fashion editorial, including covering Fashion Week and interviewing brand founders, feeds into an ability to connect these staples back to broader brand stories and trends without drifting into abstract fashion criticism.
Best skincare and haircare, tried and tested
Stephenson’s beauty work is anchored in tried-and-tested skincare and haircare, with many features explicitly positioned as editor-tested or dermatologist-informed. She covers targeted skincare categories such as vitamin C serums, azelaic acid treatments and full-brand round-ups for labels like Medik8 and The Ordinary, focusing on concerns like pigmentation, texture and sensitivity.
These pieces group products by skin type or concern and explain texture, finish and active ingredients in plain terms, then link those details back to how the product performed in testing. On haircare, she profiles solutions for issues such as hair loss and growth, alongside tool-based guides like curling wands, again grounding recommendations in hands-on trials and performance across different hair types and textures. Across these stories, she draws on interviews with dermatologists and other industry experts, using their input to support claims about efficacy and to contextualise how ingredients or technologies work.
The overall effect is direct, practical guidance that treats skincare and haircare as problem-solving categories, with clear links between user needs, expert opinion and product results.
Celebrity and cult beauty brand reviews with honest results
A distinct strand of Stephenson’s beat is deep-dive reviews of celebrity-founded and cult beauty brands, built around extensive testing and clear before-and-after outcomes.
Her coverage of Victoria Beckham Beauty, for example, involves more than £1,200 worth of product, with the piece structured to show which items justified the spend and which did not. Similar brand reviews for Il Makiage, Merit Beauty and other buzzy labels focus on shade range, texture, wear time and how the products perform under everyday conditions, rather than relying on marketing claims.
She frequently uses “before and after” framing and timed application notes in stories such as her lash-lift-in-a-bottle feature, signalling speed of use and visible impact as key criteria.
In advent calendar and seasonal beauty round-ups, she evaluates the mix of full-size versus travel-size items, the calibre of included brands and the overall value of the set, drawing on several years of testing across skincare, haircare and makeup. These reviews position her as a professional shopper who has worked through most major celebrity and influencer-backed lines, and they consistently return to the question of which products genuinely deserve attention and budget.
Professional shopper across the Hearst portfolio
Stephenson’s role is explicitly framed as that of a professional shopper, producing e-commerce content for Cosmopolitan, ELLE and Harper’s Bazaar and contributing to other titles in the same group. She has been focused on e-commerce writing since 2022, during which she has created shopping pages and reviews that span beauty devices, everyday makeup, hair tools and fashion staples for a wide range of budgets and needs. Her work regularly appears across the Hearst portfolio, including contributions to Women’s Health, Good Housekeeping, Red and Prima, where she maintains the same product-led, testing-first approach.
She is also present on camera in shopping content, trialling viral products to see whether they live up to social media hype and feeding those results back into written guides. Over several years of testing, she has built up a broad view of what constitutes good value in fashion and beauty, and her coverage consistently reflects that perspective: plainly written, comparative, and grounded in direct experience with the products she recommends.
4 more fashion journalists.
Adam Cheung
Adam Cheung is a style writer at British GQ with a specialist focus on sneakers, streetwear and menswear product coverage. He treats sneakers and streetwear as culture and design objects, writing about individual models, new silhouettes and the details that make them stand out. His work spans men’s style, watches and grooming, keeping attention on how people can wear and buy into emerging trends. He produces service-led shopping edits on shoes, bags and accessories, built around clear recommendations and concise reasoning. He covers brands and market trends with an emphasis on wearable takeaways for everyday style and occasion dressing. His British GQ features are republished across international GQ editions, and he runs Typed Hype, an Instazine dedicated to sneaker culture, extending his coverage across mainstream menswear, niche releases and culture-facing commentary.
Alexandra Fullerton
Alexandra Fullerton is a freelance stylist and fashion writer for The Telegraph, known for turning professional styling methods into simple, practical rules for dressing. She covers outfit formulas, wardrobe edits, seasonal dressing, tights, festive knitwear, high-street fashion, smart shopping and investment pieces. Her advice focuses on what to keep, what to buy and how to wear it in real life, rather than fashion news or abstract trends. She draws on a long career as a fashion director and editor at Stylist and Glamour, styling shoots and working with actors, musicians and presenters. She also styles commercial campaigns and individual clients. Fullerton writes fashion books, including guides to everyday dressing and Chanel bags, and runs the My3Words shopping concept based on her three-word method.
Alexandria Dale
Alexandria Dale specialises in turning celebrity style and emerging trends into affordable high street shopping guides. She is Digital Fashion Writer at Cosmopolitan UK, covering fashion news, trend analysis and product-led features. Her beat includes seasonal colours, fabrics, transitional dressing, polished looks on a budget, sustainable fashion and new brands. She finds high street alternatives to luxury pieces and identifies trends worth investing in, with a focus on fit, fabric, versatility and repeat wear. Her guides often centre on one trend or wardrobe staple, with specific buys under a clear price cap. Recent work includes Victoria Beckham-inspired burgundy leather midi skirts, Primark wide-leg trousers, M&S argyle jumpers and Primark home delivery. She has six years of fashion journalism experience across digital and print titles, including Glamour and Ok!, and reports with practical styling advice and product detail.
Alice Reynolds
Alice Reynolds is a writer and production journalist on The Independent’s IndyBest shopping desk who tests accessible supermarket and high-street products in real life. She focuses on fashion, beauty, food and fitness, reviewing supermarket food and drink, protein bars and creatine supplements, and high-street clothing and beauty launches. Her beat spans supermarket staples such as dark chocolate, pizzas, Easter eggs and Greek yoghurt, plus workout snacks and performance supplements, and value-led fashion like viral jackets, wrap skirts and beauty advent calendars. She runs comparative “best of” round-ups that weigh flavour, texture, thickness, quality, price and usefulness, using hands-on trials and taste tests. Her reporting is plain, practical and grounded in repeated supermarket and high-street testing, informed by interests in food, fitness and lifestyle shopping and earlier experience across travel and news formats.