The i-D Alphabet

VICE absorbed i-D the way things get absorbed now—without ceremony, and then they made a video about it. The smart move. You don’t announce a media consolidation with a press release. You make something that looks like an ad: models spelling the alphabet in clothes that are so perfectly put together you forget what a strange thing they’re actually doing. It’s probably the best way to announce you’ve acquired something. Keep the thing people care about—the styling, the photography, the eye—and just keep doing it, maybe better.

The video itself is fine. It’s designed to prove VICE understands what made i-D worth buying. Real models instead of the usual catalog bodies. Clothes that don’t scream trend—they just look right. The whole thing has the opposite feeling of desperate. It’s not we’re cool and bought something cool. It’s just: here are good clothes on interesting people. Alphabet video. Done.

What stuck with me was Miranda Kerr’s outfit, which is weird because it’s a four-second moment in a video where models are literally spelling letters. But that’s the thing about clothes that are actually designed instead of thrown together. You remember them. I don’t think there’s anything sexy about it in a lazy sense. It’s more like the clothes are thinking. Which is what i-D was always supposed to be good at—that level of attention. Even announcing its own collapse, they do the thing they know how to do. That’s maybe why VICE wanted it.

I don’t know what happens next. Maybe i-D stays weird and good. Maybe it becomes one more content franchise. But right now they announced their own obsolescence by doing the thing they’ve always done well, which is make clothes look undeniable. That counts for something.