OU see a lot of strange things at fashion shows,
but models chugging cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon is not usually one of
them. Two weeks ago, however, at the show put on by Vice, a
Lafayette Street boutique, a series of gaunt men and women in $200
overalls and $80 T-shirts applied their bee-stung lips to cans of
beer and then gleefully tossed the remainder of the brew — sometimes
nearly half the can — on the whimpering audience. In the front row,
a slender woman with a fuchsia streak in her hair raised an
umbrella.
After the show, a sendup of Fashion Week, the wet 20- and
30-something crowd gathered in a parking lot next to the store,
gripping plastic cups of beer pumped from a keg and eating barbecued
hot dogs served by waitresses on pink roller skates.
In many ways, Vice, which is less known for retail lines than for
publishing a free glossy magazine found at downtown boutiques like
Seize sur Vingt and record stores like Other Music, embodies the
apex of hipsterdom 2003. What that has meant this year is a
trailer-park sensibility, embraced with and without irony, that has
taken hold among postcollegiate society in the Silver Lake district
of Los Angeles, in Brooklyn and on the Lower East Side of
Manhattan.
The fashion aesthetic is epitomized by vintage shirts with high
school football logos and the foam-front trucker hat. In
entertainment, the touchstones are the Southern rock revivalists
Kings of Leon and testosterone-charged skateboarder-influenced shows
like "Jackass" and "Punk'd." In contrast to older and gentler
downtown style guides like Paper magazine, Vice shuns the Nirvana
generation's wounded sense of responsibility, instead embracing a
frat-boy crudity and ethnic stereotypes. Think of it as a lad
magazine for the Williamsburg set.
"Of all the magazines that are out there, I think that's the one
that nails hipster culture on the head," said Robert Lanham, author
of "The Hipster Handbook," a recent satire in the spirit of "The
Official Preppy Handbook."
As Jimmy Kimmel, a comedian on ABC-TV, put it: "People throw the
term `politically incorrect' around a lot, and normally it's a lot
of bluster, but Vice truly is un-p.c. Their brand of humor is what I
would do if there were no `standards and practices' on TV."
The magazine has its detractors, especially among women, and the
retail store (which has three branches) is accused by online
bloggers of commercializing hipsterdom. But so far the stores and
the magazine have proven successful. The Cassandra Report, a trend
survey issued by Youth Intelligence, part of the Creative Artists
Agency, recently queried 300 "trendsetters" who ranked Vice as one
of the top three magazines among people 19 to 30.
Founded in 1994 in Montreal by three out-of-work friends — Gavin
McInnes, now 33, Suroosh Alvi, 34, and Shane Smith, 33 — Vice
acquired a $10 million cash injection from a dot-com company (now
defunct) and moved its operations to Manhattan, opening retail
stores in SoHo, Los Angeles and Toronto.
The founders, who recently started British and Australian
editions of the magazine, say their business plan is to use Vice's
credibility with young people to form partnerships with record
labels and clothing lines, something that is already under way.
At Vice stores the merchandise is a mix of high fashion and
kitsch, including $1,000 Evisu men's suits and women's underpants
with "I Don't Have AIDS . . . Yet" in blue script on the front.
(Plans include opening another store in Tokyo and a pub in London.)
The American edition of "The Vice Guide to Sex, Drugs and Rock and
Roll" has just been published by Warner Books with cover
endorsements from Rolling Stone ("Hot Book") and Entertainment
Weekly (" `It' Read").
Atlantic Records is financing a Vice Records label, which has
signed the Streets and issued a compilation of downtown cult bands
like Interpol and Le Tigre. Showtime has ordered a "Vice" cable
pilot, to star David Cross of "Mr. Show" fame. And Vice has five
movies in production, the founders say, including one starring Casey
Affleck and another written by Mr. Smith and Spike Jonze, the
director of "Adaptation" and "Being John Malkovich."
"Spike is the one guy in Hollywood who's one of us," Mr. Smith
said. "He's not going to make a wack film. He's going to make a cool
film with us."
All of which raises a question: if Vice spreads its brand of
fashion, journalism and entertainment across the map, how hip can it
remain? Will they still love it on Lafayette Street if it's at the
mall in Massapequa? By definition, hip taste is embraced by hipsters
because the masses don't get it — and can't buy it. (Nor should a
hipster ever admit to being one; Mr. McInnes says hipsters are
"spoiled rotten.")
Mr. McInnes, who has a full beard and a tattoo across his back
that reads "Destruction" and who serves as the unofficial spokesman
for Vice magazine, dismisses the notion of selling out.
"The term `sell out' is juvenile and naïve," he wrote in an
e-mail message from the company's unkempt offices in a
graffiti-lined warehouse in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
Mr. Smith called the appeal of the trailer-park aesthetic
purveyed by Vice the latest twist on bohemia's old nostalgie de la
boue.
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