Shawna Healey
Shawna Healey covers fashion, beauty and consumer shopping for Manchester Evening News, with a focus on affiliate-led reviews and deal-driven service journalism. She concentrates on high-street retailers, designer names and celebrity-inspired products, showing readers where the strongest value sits in clothing, fragrance and beauty gifts. Her work combines first-hand testing, clear price breakdowns and detailed descriptions of promotions, often framing trends and launches through the lens of savings and practicality.
Beauty boxes, advent calendars and value-heavy gifts
Beauty edits and advent calendars are a core part of Healey’s commerce beat, where she parses bundles by their contents, total value and cost per item. She covers luxury beauty boxes and curated edits, such as gift sets where the combined product value significantly exceeds the selling price, and highlights the brands involved and how many items are full-size.
In these pieces she spells out the headline valuation, the reduced sale price and the effective discount, making it easy to understand how much more product readers receive than they pay for.
Her recent coverage includes advent calendars from beauty and toy brands and multi-brand edits from major retailers, with attention to how quickly preorders sell out and how many units were bought the previous year. She frequently flags boxes that sold out within hours in earlier seasons or that include hero products not previously offered in similar sets, positioning them as limited opportunities for savvy shoppers.
These articles often sit at the intersection of beauty fandom and money-saving advice, guiding readers through complex offers at department stores and online retailers.
Healey’s treatment of beauty bundles is practical rather than promotional: she explains what is inside, how it compares to earlier versions and whether the discount is meaningful enough to justify the spend. She pays particular attention to edits that include high-profile moisturisers, makeup or skincare with strong brand recognition, and uses photography and straightforward descriptions to convey texture, packaging and overall feel.
Across this strand of her work, the emphasis stays on clear information and value rather than hype.
Perfume, fragrance dupes and designer discounts
Fragrance is another distinct thread in Healey’s coverage, where she tracks designer perfumes, aftershaves and their budget alternatives.
She reports on large-scale promotions such as half-price events on dozens of designer scents at national chemists, listing specific brands and showing how much shoppers save against the usual price. Gift sets and discovery edits carry similar treatment, with attention to the original combined value versus the reduced offer, and commentary on why a set represents “amazing value” for fragrance fans.
Dupes and near matches to high-end perfumes feature heavily: she compares low-cost bottles from supermarkets and high-street retailers with far more expensive designer fragrances, often quoting shoppers on how closely they match. In these stories she translates viral social media chatter into practical guidance, acknowledging the appeal of a dupe while also signposting paths to buy the original scent at a better price through clever promotions. Healey’s fragrance pieces balance aspiration and thrift, treating readers as cost-conscious but still interested in recognisable luxury names.
Her approach to perfume and aftershave mirrors her wider commerce style: clear price comparisons, straight lists of participating brands and honest assessments of whether a discount stands out in the current market. She uses simple language to explain edit structures, minimum spend thresholds and timing, helping readers judge when to wait and when to act.
These articles position her as a go-to voice on accessible ways to build a fragrance wardrobe without paying full designer prices.
High-street fashion, comfort pieces and occasion wear
Healey writes frequently about clothing and footwear that bridge comfort, work and social occasions, with a particular eye on trousers, knitwear and blazers.
Her fashion coverage looks at specific garments, such as stretchy trousers that work for both office days and Christmas parties, and cardigans described by shoppers as “like wearing a cuddle”. She highlights details such as fabric feel, fit, versatility and how pieces can be dressed up or down, often grounding description in customer reviews and her own wear tests.
She also showcases seasonal staples like autumn blazers that pair well with multiple types of trousers and jeans, explaining how they sit within a reader’s existing wardrobe. Footwear receives similar attention, including trainers from established brands that become effectively free when bought through specific promotions, with notes on cushioning and all-day comfort.
Her fashion stories place high-street brands at the centre and frame purchases as practical upgrades rather than trend-chasing.
Celebrities surface in this strand through items such as personalised necklaces seen on reality series, which Healey then traces to comparable or identical pieces that shoppers can buy. She uses these hooks to connect pop culture moments to accessible products, focusing less on celebrity gossip and more on price, quality and customisation options. Her coverage of home, lifestyle and gadgets, including celebrity-endorsed appliances like Stacey Solomon’s ice cream maker, follows the same service pattern: what it does, how many functions it offers and how much discount is on the table.
Store visits, launches and first-hand testing
Beyond desk-based deal roundups, Healey undertakes in-person store visits and launch coverage, reporting on openings and new retail concepts through her own experience.
She has documented the opening of budget beauty stores that position themselves as rivals to larger international chains, sharing her top product picks and impressions from walking the shop floor. These pieces include operational details such as opening hours and the retailer’s history at a given site, alongside photos and simple commentary on layout and range.
Her launch coverage extends to brand-specific events like major sale kick-offs from well-known beauty houses, where she breaks down hero products, bundle structures and limited-time offers. In these cases she combines promotional information with practical notes on what makes a particular mystery bag or edit different from previous years, including the first-time inclusion of certain flagship items.
The tone remains measured and factual, rooted in what shoppers actually receive for their money.
Across her body of work, Healey’s distinguishing trait is a consistent, value-first lens on fashion, beauty and lifestyle shopping, underpinned by direct experience of products and stores. Her articles favour clear numbers, concrete descriptions and straightforward judgments over opinion or column-style voice, making her coverage a reliable reference point for readers weighing whether a trend, dupe or deal is worth it.
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.