Grazia

About Grazia

When Grazia launched in Britain in February 2005, it did something no one had done before: it put a glossy fashion magazine on a weekly schedule. Backed by a £16 million launch budget, 650,000 free taster copies and a heavyweight editorial team, it billed itself as "Britain's first weekly glossy" — the weekly Vogue. Two decades on, published by Bauer Media, it remains one of the UK's defining women's fashion titles: a fortnightly print magazine, a daily website, and a global brand published in more than 20 countries, built on the formula its Italian parent pioneered in 1938.

History and Founding

Grazia originated in Italy, where it was launched in 1938 by the publisher Mondadori and grew into one of Europe's great women's weeklies. The British edition was launched in February 2005 by Emap, under licence from Mondadori, as the first weekly women's glossy magazine in the country. The launch was one of the most ambitious in British magazine history: a £16 million budget, 650,000 taster copies given away in shops the week before launch, and a first-issue sales figure of 155,157 copies — beating its target of 150,000.

The first three covers set the tone: Jennifer Aniston, Kate Moss and Nicole Kidman — celebrity-led, fashion-forward, unapologetically glamorous. First editor Fiona McIntosh recruited what the trade press called a heavyweight team, including no fewer than five former editors of women's magazines. The gamble paid off: within four years sales peaked at 230,000 a week in 2009, and the title was named PPA Magazine of the Year in 2008, with judges calling it "a media icon of our times".

Editorial Focus and Audience

Fashion is at the heart of Grazia's proposition in every territory, but the British edition built its identity on speed: luxury fashion and celebrity style delivered weekly, with the quick turnaround that let it put Prada, Gucci and Dolce & Gabbana advertisers next to pictures shot days earlier. It was, in the trade's phrase, "upmarket but weekly" — the first women's magazine able to attract couture advertisers on a weekly schedule.

The target reader, as publisher Bauer Media defines her, is the upmarket 25-to-45-year-old woman with an interest in high fashion and celebrity lifestyle — though the brand's own description has broadened: "the place smart women come to when they want to feel informed, entertained and inspired". Beyond fashion and beauty, Grazia covers TV, politics and the issues affecting women globally, from career pressures to relationships, positioning itself as a thought-leader on what drives today's woman rather than a mere catalogue of clothes.

Ownership and Publishing

Grazia UK was launched by Emap and sold to Bauer Media in December 2007 (the takeover completing in 2008), when the German publishing giant acquired Emap's consumer magazine business. It is now published by Bauer Consumer Media as part of one of Europe's largest magazine portfolios. The Italian parent brand remains with Mondadori, and the title is now published in over 20 countries globally under licence — a genuinely international fashion brand with a British flagship.

Bauer has managed the title through the structural transformation of magazine publishing: from weekly print dominance, through the digital disruption of the 2010s, to today's multi-platform model. The publisher commissioned bespoke research into the lives of upmarket 25-to-44-year-old women to mark the brand's milestones, treating Grazia as a laboratory for understanding its audience.

Print Editions and Frequency

Grazia launched as a weekly and held that rhythm for most of its life — the weekly frequency was its founding innovation. Today, Grazia UK is published fortnightly in print, available on newsstand and by subscription, a change that reflects both the economics of print and the shift of daily fashion coverage online. Of particular note are the seven fashion issues published each year, alongside special issues tied to key events — the title produced a commemorative edition for the coronation of King Charles, for example.

Print circulation tells the story of the industry: from the 230,000 peak of 2009, through 145,851 actively purchased copies in the year to December 2013, to 154,000 combined print and digital in the second half of 2014 — almost exactly the figure it launched with a decade earlier, which the trade press read as a success story "given the general decline of the print magazine industry". The fortnightly print edition remains the brand's prestige anchor.

Digital Presence

Grazia Daily — graziadaily.co.uk — was launched in 2008 and quickly became central to the brand's multi-platform strategy: the "who, what, wear?" concept available on web, apps, Twitter and Facebook feeds, updated on an hourly and daily basis with the same content pillars as the print magazine. The digital operation was recognised early: Grazia was named Best Consumer Digital Brand at the PPA Digital Awards, and its mobile apps consistently ranked in the top 10 of the Top Grossing chart on Apple Newsstand.

Today the brand reaches its audience across Facebook, X, Instagram, Pinterest and TikTok, with additional content on Apple News+. In 2021 it launched @TheJuggleUK, a social community for parents sharing advice, humour and passions — an extension of the brand into community rather than just content. The website's "About" page describes Grazia as covering "everything from beauty to TV and politics", reflecting how far the digital edition has travelled from pure fashion.

Iconic Features

The London Fashion Week issues have become the biggest of the year, editorially and commercially — "increasingly delivering exclusive fashion content within an advertising environment that our clients know cuts through and connects with premium audiences faster than any other glossy on the market", as Bauer puts it. The seven annual fashion issues are the brand's catwalk-season set pieces, combining designer coverage with the celebrity style that has been the title's signature since the Aniston-Moss-Kidman opening run.

The 10th-birthday celebrations in 2015 — a commemorative edition, an exhibition and a series of talks from figures including the author David Nicholls, the lawyer Miriam González Durántez and the journalist Mishal Husain — showed how the brand had grown from fashion weekly into cultural institution. The birthday research study into the lives of upmarket women became a talking point in its own right.

Notable Contributors

First editor Fiona McIntosh set the template: a heavyweight editor recruiting a heavyweight team, including five former editors of women's magazines, to launch a title that would be taken seriously by both the fashion industry and the news trade. The photographers, stylists and writers who have filled Grazia's pages across two decades include many of the leading names in British fashion journalism.

The brand's voice has been shaped by columnists and contributors writing on the intersection of fashion, celebrity and women's lives — the agenda-setting features on what affects women globally that the title now foregrounds. The 10th-anniversary talks programme, drawing figures from law, literature and broadcast journalism, reflected the breadth of the contributor and collaborator network the magazine had built.

Cultural Impact

Grazia's launch genuinely transformed the glossy market: it proved that luxury fashion content could work on a weekly cycle, forcing monthly competitors to speed up and inventing the category of the weekly glossy. The PPA judges' 2008 verdict — "a media icon of our times" — captured how quickly it had become part of the furniture of British media life.

Its multi-platform strategy became a case study for the industry: the 2014 InPublishing analysis of its evolution from print weekly to integrated digital brand was widely read as a template for how legacy magazines could survive. And its editorial broadening — from fashion and celebrity into politics, careers and global women's issues — tracked and helped drive the wider movement of women's media toward substance alongside style.

Awards

Grazia's trophy cabinet is well stocked, and the honours are verified. It won the prestigious PPA Magazine of the Year award in 2008, three years after launch — an unusually fast ascent for a new title. Its digital operation was named Best Consumer Digital Brand at the PPA Digital Awards, recognising the Grazia Daily website and its market-leading tablet and smartphone apps. The title won "several industry awards" in its early years, in Bauer's own account, as the weekly-glossy formula swept the trade.

Recent Developments

The brand marked its 20th anniversary in 2025, two decades after the £16 million launch that created the weekly-glossy category. The print edition's move to fortnightly publication reflects the mature economics of the title: print as the prestige, fashion-season anchor; digital and social as the daily engine. With seven fashion issues a year, special editions for national moments, and a global footprint across more than 20 countries, Grazia remains what its launch promised — the fast, glossy, upmarket women's title — adapted for an era in which the weekly print cycle has given way to the hourly digital one.