Suroosh Alvi

Suroosh Alvi is the co-founder and publisher of VICE, a free monthly magazine that began as a newsprint tabloid in Montreal in 1994. Twenty years later, having survived the “new economy,” cut-throat competition, hostile corporate takeovers and innumerable lawsuits, the magazine exists as a popular counter-culture glossy with its head offices in New York City.

VICE’s mandate is to deliver the underbelly of urban culture to the tastemaker’s, who indulge in everything from hip hop and punk to skateboarding and fashion as well as scatology and sexual perversities. Over 85,000 copies are distributed free across Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom, and the publication enjoys massive public response.

In the last two years, the magazine has spun off the VICE Stores, a chain of high-end retail fashion outlets in Toronto, Montreal, New York and soon-to-be opened outlet in Los Angeles; the Website Viceland.com, described as the “illest place for 21st century culture online”; and VICE Fashion, its own signature clothing line. And if that were not enough, there are TV and book deals being brokered with huge American networks and fancy UK publishing houses.