Great article, as others have said the writing's on top form.

The fashion industry as it stands is guilty of all the crimes it's charged with (anti-environmentalism, sweat shop labor, sexism, racism, fueling eating disorders etc.)

But the left does itself a massive disservice by its common stance of outright rejection of fashion, of interest in clothes. Just as 'art' is not the same thing as 'the art world' and 'politics' is not the same thing as 'parliamentary politics', 'fashion' is not the same as 'the fashion industry'.

The left should understand, appropriate, and subvert fashion. Fashion and architecture are the only art forms that force themselves on our visual landscape on every street, with every person you meet. This is too important to be left to the current industry.

Clothes which look marvelous on a black skin with purple, blue, maroon or brown tones, but which would look pretty yucky on someone with a white skin with pink or yellow or light brown tones. http://www.dentaljournal.org/

Redemption after the last two days articlesd, Welcome to the real world Laurie, but unfortnualty when it comes to questioning this sort of fashion world, no one cares,

Well said Writeon
Galliano is clearly a very unpleasant drunk in the Mel Gibson mode, and in 'vino veritas' displays some repellent notions. However, much like Gibson and his anti-semitic ranting when much of the movie industry (his career)is controlled by people of Jewish extraction, so too is the rag trade. He's cut his own throat and serves him right.

Whilst Galliano is successful and talented, a great political thinker... he is not.

His kind of cartoon job and life, is great fun, but very stressful, which why there is so much drink and drugs floating around in the world of fashion. Believe me, as reformed hedonist, I know; people, party hard.

Outbursts like Galliano's are rather schoolyard bawling, aren't they? My dad's bigger than your dad! You've got a great big noise, and people with red hair are stinkers! So there!

A drunken twerp involved in altercation ouside a bar isn't going to get a prize for political correctness, or subtlety, is he? Blurting out incredibly offensive remarks about someone's race or ethnic background, is a sign of one's lack of control, of oneself and over language. It's using really bad words because one can't think of better, or the right ones to insult someone. One grabs what one thinks is the closest and best one's that are lying around.

One, surely, has to look at the language used, not just on the page, but in the context it's used, otherwise one doesn't understand the utterance properly.

The use of vile and grossly offensive and exaggerated language by drunken twerps isn't exactly new, is it? I don't that Galliano is really a racist or violently anit-semetic, for that label to be applied to him, surely he'd need to have expressed such views in other contexts, repeatedly, and when he was perfectly sober and fully in control of himself.

In the United Sates I did some research in prisons, where I talked to people who, when in groups, spewed the most extraordinary racist garbage at me, stuff that makes Galliano's utterances seem pure as the driven snow, unbelievable bile and frothing venom. At first I was dumbfounded and shocked down to my cotton socks. I was often almost redued to tears.

Then in private interviews with the same people things changed radically. There were a few people who appeared to be mentally ill, but most of them were guilty of grotesque and shocking bravado to assert their status in the group. On their own their views were moderated.

I am not trying to make excuses for Galliano, rather on needs to explain and see this kind of outburst and immoderate use of language, in the proper context, in order to understand it properly for what it is, not what it isn't.

What can I say? Brilliant, but all rather depressing, too. To cheer myself up, I'll re-read that blistering opening paragraph over and over...

if nick griffin of the bnp was caught out making the same comments,,you marxists and commies would falling over backwards to attack him,,, you hypocrites...

It's very sad, because the guy was a great designer, who had risen to the top, but such horrible outbursts towards Jewish people are completely unacceptable, by him, or New Statesman staff.

That Anand Jon guy looks truly despicable - bet he's having a great time behind bars, the short eyes little creep!!

I am really touched by your writing Laurie and I could not agree with you more. As a psychotherapist I work with the psycho-political and psychosocial wounds as well as attacks on our bodies on a daily basis. We live in a highly aggressive and violent time where people are excluded, attacked, tortured and disappear on a daily basis while at the same time we are told how safe and peaceful our life is. Galiano's comments in my view bring the institutionalized (un)conscious murderous hate towards whatever is conceived and designed to be The Other. The extinction nowadays does not need KZs any more and capitalist production has given us more refined weapons such as airbrush and other digital tools. The problem for me is not that we know there are misogynistic and anti semitic views around but that the mass of people just support those systems by just agreeing and running along....That does ring horrific bells in my Austrian ears. Thank you for your courageous and sometimes brilliant words!

Gerhard

dillon spot on... now lets not up-set medieval fuck-wits. The political-lefts love affair with this truly ghastly religion is breathtaking. What the fuck does progressive socialism have in common with religious fascism. Out of all the three desert dogmas, the left embrace Islam. WHY?

Does anybody out there know what went on before he was captured on film? I feel like there's more to this story than just a barrage of racial insults blurted out in a drunken haze.

It's also notable that acts by the rich -individual or corporate -are always "alleged" -even if the evidence is there for the world to see.

Good article on the b*stard Penny.

you say laurie penny, his alleged anti semetic comments,,hang on. his disgusting racist anti semetic comments where clear to be heard on tape full stop,,and his defence about he was full of drink and had a bad hair day does not wash with me,,this man is a nasty,unpleasant snide who should learn to keep his filthy vile views to himself and i hope he gets made an example of when he gets sentenced in court..

PS storming article. a self-hating industry run by self-hating gays for self-hating women. where has the art gone. bought.

I take a lot of photographs as part of my work (no, I'm not a professional photographer and I'm not in fashion). Some of my photographs are of black people and I have noticed that they can (and do) wear entirely different coloured clothes. Clothes which look marvelous on a black skin with purple, blue, maroon or brown tones, but which would look pretty yucky on someone with a white skin with pink or yellow or light brown tones. So, if you're a fashion designer, do you design different clothes for people with different skin colours and get accused of racism, or do they all get the same clothes and you get accused of having no taste?

laurie you're jacket is quite ill fitting if you ask me and beneath?

Pissed-up, and probably high, fashion queen says some things that he wouldn't dream of saying when sober. And that's news? Yawn.

Are the people behind the cash tills at Topshop mincing "down the bodies of vulnerable young people"? Are the buyers at Dorothy Perkins? Are the academics at the London College of Fashion who are using 3D printing technologies? Were writers like Elizabeth Wilson and Joanna Entwhistle?

I have problems with the industry, I have problems with sexism and racism within fashion that have not been alleviated by my industry-related Postgraduate degree course (though quite a lot of them were addressed) but I find it ignorant, hyperbolic and unacceptable to tar everyone with the brush that you use in the first paragraph. I think you're insulting the industry when you don't know the first thing about the people who have to deal with the knowledge that they're stuck in a system that they simply have to deal with. As a political activist you should know a little something about that so in response to the prejudice of your introduction I say shame on you Laurie Penny.

Fashion is part of the world, not outside it. Exploitation is par for the course almost everywhere one looks. Why do people assume that behind the scenes fashion is somehow as beutiful as the clothes? Much of the clothing we were is produced by people who are close to slaves, as the industry has moved into the third world. But, this is the character of capitalism, how do people think capital accumulates? It comes from exploitation.

What troubles me is that one takes a single example of degeneracy, Galliano's outburst, and then explodes this into a rant about the entire industry, drawing in more and more examples of perfidy on the basis of a very small foundation; which is both a gross exaggeration, trivializes serious issues, and seems rather puritanical.

'He tells two horrified women' hardly horrified!! Two women goading a drunk. Besides isn't anti-semitism fashionable with many on the political-left. Sorry!! anti-zionism.