Mischa Anouk Smith

Mischa Anouk Smith is the News & Features Editor at Marie Claire UK, where she leads the section, commissioning and writing investigations, long-form features, and commentary at the intersection of culture, politics, and the issues shaping women’s lives.

From pop culture to politics— and beyond to technology, work, fertility, relationships, and money—her work combines rigorous reporting with sharp cultural analysis, interrogating the structural forces shaping women’s experiences and translating complex issues into compelling, reader-focused storytelling.

In 2026, Mischa was named Best Writer/Columnist of the Year at the PPA Awards and shortlisted for Best Features Writer at the BSME Talent Awards. She was also shortlisted for a Write to End Violence Against Women Award for her investigation into rape culture in primary schools.

Her investigation, The Fertility Gold Rush: How Big Business Took Over Baby-Making, examined falling birth rates not as a social panic or personal failing, but through the lens of economic pressure, workplace inequality and the growing commercialisation of fertility. The feature won both Impact of the Year and Editorial Excellence at the Future Awards and led to invitations to speak with the UK's Employment Secretary and appear on BBC Politics Live. She has also appeared on BBC Woman's Hour discussing women's political engagement and activism following Donald Trump's return to the White House, having reported on the ground from London's Women's March.

Alongside investigative journalism, Mischa specialises in cultural criticism, first-person storytelling and opinion writing. Endlessly curious about the niche corners of life, both online and IRL, she's particularly interested in the ways emerging cultural phenomena reveal something bigger about how we live, work and relate to one another.

Before joining Marie Claire UK, Mischa worked as a freelance journalist for publications including Refinery29, Stylist, Dazed, Riposte, Polyester and Far Out. Her work explored everything from the post-pandemic beauty boom and the complicated relationships between therapists and their clients to the rise of AI girlfriends, internet culture and the experience of belonging to ‘Generation Boomerang’.

Mischa began her career in fashion journalism as Womenswear Editor at Harvey Nichols, working across print and digital. There, she interviewed designers including Dries Van Noten, Stine Goya and Rosetta Getty, alongside celebrities, including Rosie Huntington-Whiteley and Penélope Cruz. She later became Brand Editor at Scandinavian fashion label GANNI, where she edited the GANNI Talks podcast and the brand's debut book, GANNI Gimme More, featuring contributions from writers including Susie Lau and Marjon Carlos.

An experienced speaker and lecturer, Mischa has delivered talks on journalism, fashion history, digital culture and careers in media at Roxhill Media, University of the Arts London, the University for the Creative Arts and Graduate Fashion Foundation. She also led a three-week Lifestyle Journalism course at UAL's London College of Communication.

Mischa lives in Hackney with her partner, a film-poster designer, in a flat that is far too small — a predicament familiar to just about every London millennial (though she still baulks at any mention of avocado toast). When she's not investigating the cultural forces shaping women's lives, she's probably falling down an internet rabbit hole in the name of research, or documenting the realities of London living on Instagram.