Melissa Twigg

Melissa Twigg is a features and fashion writer at The Telegraph, covering contemporary fashion, lifestyle and culture through reported features and opinion-led essays. Her work shows how consumer choices, social codes and cultural figures reflect wider shifts in class, gender and modern family life. Alongside fashion and lifestyle coverage, she writes on the royal family and education, including an examination of why Eton has been chosen to school the future king.

Fashion industry and high-street brands

Fashion’s power structures and the realities of the retail market sit at the centre of much of Twigg’s coverage.

She tackles the industry’s gender imbalance in senior creative roles, asking why so many brands aimed at women are still designed by men and framing fashion’s “glass ceiling” as stubbornly intact. She writes closely about high-street names and affordable labels, analysing how brands such as Uniqlo have evolved from insiders’ favourites to global giants that rival or surpass competitors like Zara. Her pieces on Zara’s lingerie launch and Marks & Spencer underwear set new collections against the longstanding trust consumers place in familiar retailers, explaining why novelty does not automatically dislodge established buying habits.

Across these articles she combines commercial detail, trend analysis and lived experience, positioning fashion as both an industry and a daily habit.

Social etiquette, weddings and everyday style

Social codes around dress and behaviour are a recurring theme, especially where they intersect with major life events. Twigg’s guidance on whether it is ever acceptable to wear white to someone else’s wedding takes the form of a candid, first-person exploration of social taboos and expectations, using her own engagement as a narrative anchor to unpack long-standing rules. She writes about how women over 50 have moved away from the traditional work suit, arguing that some brands have failed to keep pace with the way professional wardrobes and age-related style have changed. These pieces blend etiquette, generational perspectives and wardrobe practicalities, making clear that dress codes are not abstract but negotiated through real relationships and workplaces.

Domestic life, relationships and modern family pressures

Beyond fashion, Twigg turns to the strains of domestic labour and modern relationships, treating home life as a subject for features rather than lifestyle tips. In one reported narrative on a couple whose £500-a-month cleaners “saved” their marriage, she presents domestic help not as a luxury accessory but as a structural support that reshapes how partners share time, stress and responsibility. Her writing links money, time poverty and emotional load, showing how seemingly mundane household arrangements function as pressure points in contemporary family life.

This focus on the texture of everyday experience and the compromises households make sits alongside her broader interest in how families navigate social expectations in public settings such as weddings and schools.

Royals, celebrities and global stories

Twigg’s features often connect individual figures to wider cultural or political currents.

Her work on the royal family, including the analysis of the future king’s education at Eton, treats schooling and tradition as lenses on class, privilege and institutional continuity rather than as isolated royal trivia. She has written about Madonna’s decision to move to London at a time when much of the elite is said to be leaving the city, using the pop star’s choice to interrogate narratives of urban decline and cultural pull. In a separate news feature, she reports on families of Hamas hostages, documenting their experiences and fears through detailed testimonies and emphasising the human cost behind geopolitical events.

This ability to move from fashion desks to hard news, while maintaining a focus on individual stories and social context, reflects earlier freelance work across travel, fashion and arts with an emphasis on Africa and Asia, and contributions to international outlets including CNN, the BBC and Vogue.

Background and reporting approach

Twigg’s professional background spans features, travel, fashion and arts journalism, building a portfolio across multiple major publications before taking up her current role at The Telegraph. She has written guidebooks to cities including Cape Town and Hong Kong, which informs a global perspective and interest in how place, culture and style intersect.

Across outlets she has worked as a freelance journalist and features writer, contributing to newspapers, broadcasters and specialist fashion titles. Her Telegraph work combines first-person voice, reported interviews and narrative reconstructions, using accessible prose and concrete detail to make fashion, etiquette and family pressures legible to a broad audience.