Vice DOs & DON'Ts: 10 Years of Vice Magazine's Street Fashion Critiques

The hilarious, famously scathing Dos & Don'ts section of Vice gets its due in the latest compendium by Alvi, McInnes and Smith (The Vice Guide to Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll). It's the best part of a magazine identified, variously, as an""ultra-hip underground magazine"" and a""hotch-potch of F-words, cocaine, music and sex with occasional rants about how 'stupid, lazy, older people should stop being so pathetic and shortsighted' ""--and known to those who read it as being a publication full of irresistibly stupid stuff written by very smart people. The legend of the magazine's provenance is crucial (""Ten years ago two drunks and a junkie decided to take advantage of Montreal's many 'make work' programs and start a government-funded magazine"") to its appeal, and the Vice creators have spawned a kind of scruffy media empire out of their moments of juvenile genius. In the Dos & Don'ts, chief fashion analyst McInnis serves up wicked gems (many unprintable) to accompany the little photos. Of a man playing soccer in a Speedo, he writes,""You little Rikki-Tikki-Tavi in blue trunks--mongoosing all over the place like Julian Lennon video""; of a child wearing a leather jacket, he writes""Dear Kids, I hate your tiny little guts. Thanks for making it worse by 'Born To Be Wild'ing your self sic up like that poster in my Guidance Counsellor's sic office."" When he's feeling complimentary, he says of two middle-aged Quebecoise,""Even after 40 they still rock the high heels and cleavage....while the English moms go the way of the track pant, the frogs will be wearing that garter belt all the way to the grave."" You get the idea.