The recent furore concerning Dolce and Gabbana’s claims about “synthetic” babies would appear to be predicated upon the assumption that the world of fashion should be politically responsible when it is arguable it has rarely, if ever, been so. The current scandal is the latest in a long line of outrages from heroin chic to Naomi Campbell’s claims about racism in modelling and from Galliano’s comments about Nazis to the horrors of crashing factories in Bangladesh. The latter is a case in point. Shoppers interviewed outside Primark the day after the tragedy openly declared they would not stop shopping and carried on filling their brown bags. It would seem then that somewhat homophobic comments about babies are more likely to lead to a boycott than slavery and carnage in the world of fashion. Of course in addition to this Primark is cheap and D&G is not. Boycotting the expensive when you are part of a wealthy few is not really a boycott at all when not buying your tops at Primark does mean you have to spend more money elsewhere. Nevertheless why do so many need so much at all? Fashion in many ways depends upon its capacity to wipe political consciousness and render the mittens of the homeless a design trend. It is perhaps not surprising then that those enclosed in the bubble of profitable design houses should then prove so politically inept. The problem remains explaining why this particular fracas should grip the public imagination far more than others – it could partly be the increasing enslavement to celebrity but I suspect it has far more to do with babies. The baby’s bottom line sits on biology here or rather love. Elton John’s increasingly hysterical outbursts here centre on his assertion that love conquers all – his love of David Furnish and their love of their children. We seem to be entering the rather strange terrain here once seen by Antony Giddens as the “pure relationship” unshackled from demography, class, or wealth and whiter than your baby’s unused nappy or indeed away with the Fairy… except now the separation is not from the social but the biological. Non-bio you might say. Shulamith Firestone famously argued in the early 1970s that women’s emancipation depended upon advances in reproductive technology. Whether she quite foresaw what is happening now is perhaps debatable but just don’t depend on the world of fashion to do other than wash more dirty laundry in public or spot a buck and put a slogan on your T-shirt.