They said it would never work. But since its launch in 2005, Grazia has blazed a trail through magazine publishing, leaving a Louboutin-shaped footprint on the reading habits of British women and the foreheads of its competitors. So it is no surprise that recreating its success has become the holy grail of publishing - and October will see another title launch. However, the newest pretender to Grazia's crown will have an eyebrow-raising cover price: it will be free.Aimed at professional, affluent 20- to 40-year-old women, Stylist, which is being pitched as a direct competitor to Grazia, Marie Claire and Vogue, will be a female stablemate for free men's weekly ShortList. Handed out once a week in London, Manchester, Birmingham, Glasgow and Liverpool - with one other city yet to be announced - its initial distribution will be about 400,000.The glossies do not seem unduly worried. "I will watch Stylist with interest," says Jo Elvin, the editor of Glamour. "But we've made a success of Glamour by playing to our strengths - panicking about a few weekly magazines just isn't our style."ShortList Media, nevertheless, hopes that Stylist, edited by the former More! editor Lisa Smosarski, will put more than a few noses out of joint - and seize some of advertisers' shrinking spend. But is that likely? The success of its sister (or perhaps brother) title ShortList suggests that the received model for glossy publishing - a high cover price plus a large amount of luxe advertising - is not as incontrovertible as it once was. With no cover price and relatively scant advertising at launch, ShortList was predicted by many to be an unsustainable disaster - and in its first year of trading, it posted annual losses of £2.7m to August.However, ShortList's chief executive, Mike Soutar, insists the magazine is expected to break even by the end of its financial year, which occurs next month. In part, he says, this is because there has been a sea-change in the attitudes of respected brands including Clinique, BMW and O2 towards free publications. More ...