Style Columnist

Style & Fashion Columnist, Features, in New York, NY

The Wall Street Journal is seeking a New York-based style and fashion columnist on its Features & WSJ. Magazine team to deliver charming, well-observed columns and coverage on fashion and style moments in the wider culture; profiles of distinctive and interesting designers, creative directors and industry CEOs; and delectable trend stories and features that are one step ahead of the group chat.

This role covers both men’s and women’s fashion and style.

The ideal candidate is a high-metabolism feature reporter with a sense of whimsy and a zeal for chasing distinctive, visual and character-driven stories that touch the worlds of fashion and style, as well as the good sourcing and unique eye to weigh in on debates tearing across Substack and Instagram. They will excel at “calling the moment” in confident columns with a national news-oriented audience, whether a tech executive sits front row in Milan, a political leader makes a state-dinner statement or an awards carpet or brand’s repositioning touches off fierce debate.

While knowledge of the fashion and style industry is key, an explicit background covering only fashion is not required—we’re privileging the right distinctive, highly engaging voice and an ability to interpret visual ideas in a vivid manner across platforms for the Wall Street Journal audience. Some biannual travel to fashion shows and events is expected.

The Journal’s overall Features team blends deep reporting, sharp wit and good taste to create compulsively readable quick-turn stories, timely analysis pieces and enterprise narratives on the subjects of lifestyle, entertainment, culture and ideas. Stories from this team offer a lively lens on the zeitgeist, drawing connections between events and trends in the culture to form original, big-picture theses about the present moment.

Reporters on the team are also expected to pitch and write long-lead stories—think sprawling profiles or insightful trend features—for WSJ. Magazine.

• Report, write and fact-check an average one column per week about a trend, person, news event or conversation in the style and fashion world.

• Burst with highly shareable, witty, ambitious story ideas with clearly understood news value and elegant execution.

• Bring a deeply seasoned knowledge of key power players and a good roster of sources and contacts to help garner story ideas, identify trends, develop features and work toward access-driven, exclusive stories we own.

• Easily modulate between surprising, well-reported feature stories and whimsical, amusing essays or interviews. Embody the Features and WSJ. Magazine mission to simultaneously inform and entertain.

• Work collaboratively and egolessly with others—both with Features editors as well as with our style and culture teams of reporters, including reporters covering the luxury industry in our Paris and London bureaus.

• Uncover angles and ideas no one else is chasing and develop them into engaging reads. Amplify traditional profiles, trends or event stories with humanizing detail and great eye for shareable, well-crafted narrative that show potential for long-form features or as Weekend cover stories.

• Embrace audience data, learning or continuing to fuse metrics with great taste and imaginative ideas.

• Ensure the voice, tone and standards of The Wall Street Journal are consistently met; that stories are accurate, fair, objective and of impeccable quality. Scrupulously uphold newsroom policies and procedures around ethics and conduct.

• Unputdownable clips and exceptional writing and reporting skills.

• At least 5 years’ experience covering a relevant beat, including essays or columns, reported feature stories, and well-developed enterprise or longer-form features.

• A proven history of finding unexpected takes on the style and fashion world or larger creative‑culture worlds, as well as an eye for visually intriguing stories that appeal to a general audience.

• Great contacts and a dogged, indefatigable sense of how to make stories happen.

• A sense of humor, including a demonstrated ability to find clever, intelligent ways into stories that are being widely…