Vice has purchased i-D magazine, according to a release.

Yes, the magazine that once sent a journalist tripping on acid to London Fashion Week and is supposedly footing the bill for Cat Marnell’s Thailand rehab is looking to further its fashion presence.

“Our readers were fashionable, but we weren’t a fashion magazine per se,” Vice’s President Andrew Creighton tells the New York Times. Creighton worked for i-D in advertising during the late 90s and said he plans to keep all of the existing team. Terry and Tricia Jones, i-D’s founders, will stay on as minority partners.

The goal behind the partnership is to increase i-D’s digital presence with the hopes of filling a gap in the fashion industry for digitally oriented material. “There’s a huge void in video-driven fashion channels, and this partnership will fill and dominate that void,” says Terry Jones in the press release.

To that end, there are plans to expand i-D’s website, and add original programming that “will focus on profiling the most compelling personalities in fashion and culture; the intersection of fashion and music, film, and design; and emerging trends and talent around the globe, among other topics”.

This is the first purchase in a plan to expand the Vice portfolio, according to Creighton, who added: “The key for us is to find brand and content companies that we really respect, but haven’t really transitioned into the digital marketplace.”

Hmm, we wonder who else could be on their shopping list…

fashionista.com/2012