Judith Thurman connects John Galliano's anti-Semitic rant to his profession:
Galliano lives in the bubble of the high fashion world, a club restricted, almost without exception, to the comely, and the magazines that feature his work have been cleansed—if not ethnically, then aesthetically—of bodies that are not superhuman. Galliano, an anointed high priest of chic, has been accused of calling a bar patron—who, for the record, is not Jewish—a “dirty Jew face,” and, in the video, called a woman “ugly” and deplored her clothes and grooming. Their physical appearance, in other words, inspired his desire for their extermination. We should perhaps stop to consider to what degree, wittingly or not, the fashion world has the same fascination as the Nazis with eugenics.
About three centuries ago, I wrote a cover essay for TNR on the fascistic aesthetic of Bruce Weber, Herb Ritts, et al. It was a little over-the-top, but there's something there. Ask Leni Riefenstahl.
The Dish 