Palin Fashion

Sarah Palin's Political Fashion Cents

Palin's Political Fashion Cents

POSTED: 03:38 PM ET, 10/22/2008 by Derek Kravitz

TAGS: Sarah Palin, campaign, government spending

 

Gov. Sarah Palin arrives for a campaign stop in Bangor, Maine, on Oct. 16, 2008. (Robert F. Bukaty / AP)

From head to toe, every piece of clothing worn by Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the Republican vice-presidential nominee, has been picked at and prodded, from her rim-less $375 Kawasaki glasses to her red open-toed Naughty Monkey-brand shoes.

But scrutiny of her fashion sense reached to a new level after Politico reported yesterday that the Republican National Committee spent some $150,000 on high-end clothes and accessories for Palin and her family.

The expenditures, listed in a monthly financial disclosure filing with the Federal Elections Commission, included bills from Saks Fifth Avenue in St. Louis and New York for $49,425.74 and a $75,062.63 tab at a Neiman Marcus store in Minneapolis.

(The pricey clothes didn't impress The Post's Robin Givhan, who wrote in her "On Culture" column last month that Palin's style was "exceptionally ordinary...Her clothes are unpretentious, but they are also unremarkable." Givhan now calls the spending "plain stupid.")

But Palin isn't the first politician whose hefty clothing and shopping bills have been unearthed in campaign finance reports.

Last year, former Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.), a former vice-presidential and presidential candidate himself, was ridiculed after FEC records showed he had paid for $400 haircuts by celebrity hair stylist Joseph Torrenueva of Beverly Hills, Calif. The Post's John Solomon later found out that Torrenueva had cut the former senator's hair at least 16 times and, on several occasions, had to fly somewhere on the campaign trail, charging for his airfare and hotel expenses.

(The records also showed Edwards spent $250 in services from a salon and spa in Dubuque, Iowa, and $225 in services from the Pink Sapphire in Manchester, N.H., described on its Web site as "a unique boutique for the mind, body and face" that caters mostly to women, The Associated Press reported.)

There was also Sen. John McCain's (R-Ariz.) $520 Ferragamo calfskin shoes, which are imported from Italy, noted by Huffington Post earlier this year and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's (D-N.Y.) $6,000 in haircuts and makeup work, found among federal fundraising records by The New York Post.