They only come out at night: Nocturnal horror, morbidity and fascism as fashion1

The appearance of recognizably fascist, and usually Nazi, references in fashion advertising and at fashion shows is nothing new; whether categorized as Nazi chic, Nazi retro, or – in some cases – Nazi porn, images recalling the Third Reich continue to have an incandescent presence on the runways of Paris, Milan, London and New York. What a half-century ago Susan Sontag labelled ‘fascinating fascism’ seems to have lost none of its appeal, even as current political polemics traffic indiscriminately in associations and analogies that reach back into what has been called Europe’s dark century. This article explores three lodestone sources of this cultural phenomenon, in Italian sensationalist cinema of the 1960s, in what is still perhaps the most notorious of art-house films of the 1970s, and in the gay leather culture that originated in San Francisco, spread to New York and other urban centres, and persists – disease, repression and cultural backlash notwithstanding – to this day.