October 26, 2008
Regarding that $150k - I was somewhat chastened by this Campbell Brown segment defending Palin's $150k shopping spree. Women's clothes cost much more than men's, they need more of them, and like it or not a woman in the public eye is judged on her appearance.
Then I decided to look a little closer. Here's what a window-shopping spree at Saks Fifth Avenue got me (details and methodology after the jump):
- 115 suits, $560 average. Many of these were on sale -- with deals like a $1,295 St. John Santana Knit Jacket on sale for $777, how can you afford to not get a hundred of them? ($64,400 total)
- 57 pairs of shoes, averaging $610, primarily Gucci, Jimmy Choo, Ferragamo ($34,770 total).
- 15 dresses averaging $675 -- Versace, Diane von Furstenburg, Dior, more ($10,125 total)
- 11 Jackets averaging $970 from Armani, Akris, Burberry, etc. ($10,670 total)
- 32 Hats (at $240 each) and 5 Earmuffs ($290). This includes an adorable Emilio Pucci Rabbit Fur Earmuffs for $435; an Eric Javits Capuchon II Hood for $350.00 and bargain-priced Burberry Check Hat for $150. ($9,130 total)
- 37 Scarves (hey -- Alaska gets cold) at $400 on average. Selections include a $795.00 Chloé Patchwork Knit Scarf, and a $175 feel-young-again! Juicy Couture Cashmere Bow and Ruffles Scarf. ($14,800 total)
- 37 Gloves and Mittens. They were $165 on average, but I was able to afford an elegant set of Portolano Long Leather Gloves for $290 by also choosing an affordable pair of $88 Marc by Marc Jacobs Painted Intarsia Gloves. ($6,105 total)
It's not much, but it only has to last two months. For 65 days on the trail:
- I would wear each suit and dress only once, each for half a day.
- After wearing each pair of shoes one time during the first eight weeks of campaigning, I'd choose my eight favorite and wear them a second time.
- I'd wear each of the Hats, Earmuffs, Scarves and Mittens twice on average. The more time I spend in North Carolina, Florida and New Mexico the less danger (ugh!) of re-wearing an item.
- I'd generally be wearing, at any one time, $1000-$3000 of clothing.
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Methodology: Harken back to the NYTimes' stellar infographic on the components of the average US household budget. It gives these proportions for apparel:
% of hshld Category budget 0.7 % Women's Suits and Separates 0.3 % Women's Accessories 0.3 % Women's Shoes 0.1 % Dresses 0.1 % Women's Coats 0.3 % Jewelry+Watches (arbitrily split 2/3 woman, 1/3 man) ----- == Women's apparel makes up 1.7% of household budget 0.5 % Men's pants, suits and shirts 0.2 % Men's shoes 0.2 % Men's accessories 0.2 % Baby Clothes 0.9 % Boys Clothes, Girls Clothes, and Children's shoes ----- == All apparel makes up 4% of household budget
So, women in the average family cost 70% more to fit out as men. Your average hockey mom's clothes costs almost as much as the rest of the family's added together. Campaigning requires frequent costume changes, and you have to look your best. Seems totally reasonable, huh?
First, an easy calculation: scaled proportionally by the women's apparel portion, a 150k clothing budget implies a household total *expenditure* of $8.8 million. That's like $13 million pre-tax, or $15 million if the socialist is elected.
Now I know some portion of the 150k went to others in her family, but we also haven't heard the full figures yet. So let's take the 150k as a working figure and go shoppin'.
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Leaving out jewelry and watches (they can't have been *that* dumb), a 150k Women's Apparel budget spend in the above proportions looks something like:
%budg 150k budg Item 47 % $ 70,000 Suits 20 % $ 30,000 Shoes 7 % $ 10,000 Dresses 7 % $ 10,000 Jackets 20 % $ 30,000 Accessories
I visited Saks Fifth Avenue for a window shopping spree following these rules:
- All shoes were "New Arrivals, Premier Designer". That seems about right.
- All dresses were "Workwear". Workwear for guys are made to withstand oil spills and frigid temperatures and nailgun accidents. These didn't look anything like that.
- All jackets came from the "Evening", "Zip-ups", or "Cropped" categories. I have no idea what these words mean, but they looked like you could wear them to work, or to a fundraising dinner.
- Accessories were taken from Scarves, Gloves&Mittens, and Hats&Earmuffs, each in proportion to their average cost. I chose Hats and Earmuffs in the same proportion as they appeared on the first page I saw.
- Suits were on sale, and there weren't many, so I pulled in all of them.
- In each case, I selected among the first several pages of products, in whatever random order the Saks Fifth Robot chose to present them. If you don't have time to vet, you don't have time to be choosy, do you?
- This means I made no effort to choose the cheapest or the most expensive. The price listed for each category is the average of the first 30-60 items in that category.
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Summary:
%budg 150k budg Avg Price Qty Item 43 % $ 64,400 $ 560 115 Suits 23 % $ 30,770 $ 610 57 Shoes 7 % $ 10,125 $ 675 15 Dresses 7 % $ 10,670 $ 970 11 Jackets 5 % $ 7,680 $ 240 32 Accessories - Hats 1 % $ 1,450 $ 290 5 Accessories - Earmuffs 10 % $ 14,800 $ 400 37 Accessories - Scarves 4 % $ 6,105 $ 165 37 Accessories - Gloves & Mittens
Incidentally, I love that the Saks stuff costs so much they don't bother with bourgeoise crap like $.99 trailing digits -- apart from sale items everything is priced to the nearest dollar.
Well at least if she can handle the mellow accent, the eargasms are free.
The main point, however, is more about how she's buying her wardrobe out of her campaign funds than it is about the dollar amount of her wardrobe (though the fact that her wardrobe is four times the average American salary is a bit shocking).
All of the famous grooming over-reachings of candidates past were paid out of private funds, rather than the campaign.
I'd actually like to hear from the distaff crew about this. My takeaway from the figures above is the same as mkromer's:
I actually think it's really likely that this has been embezzled or gone into some slush fund for something else....there is so much that is fishy about it. (1) The stores apparently do not have receipts or combinations of receptions that match the clothing expenditures; (2) the person who actually did the purchases is an all-over the place dirty tricks consultant/operative type; (3) As you point out, the $$ defies belief; (4) Apparently the men's store where todd got his stuff is the most metro-sexual high society east coast elite place around....
As much I dislike palin, I'm pretty sure that she is getting royally shafted by this clothes thing. I think someone basically showed up at her room with a crap-ton of clothes for her that she was not really involved in buying, and I kind of think that the money is off doing something else.
Meanwhile, the major abuse of power that she is involved in and continues to blatantly lie about has barely gotten a mention. I love our electoral process!
My point with the figures above is not that they're spending campaign money like Carrie Bradshaw on Payday -- it's that there's not enough time to wear those clothes if they were really shopping at Saks and Nieman's. Crazily enough, those stores just aren't expensive enough.
OK, my 2c, which should probably be devalued:
1. Is the RNC definitely claiming the shopping was done at those stores (sorry, I haven't had much time to catch news in the past week)? B/c for those amounts, I would have guessed that they went straight to the designers (suits $1-2K easily).
2. I would not be surprised if there was a hefty (25%ish) consultant markup. Also, is makeup included, or does that go with the makeup artist? Good makeup is freakin' expensive (well, to the tune of a couple thousand, not tens).
3. No matter what, it's a lot of clothes -- even at $1000/item (*not* hard to imagine, just pick up any fashion magazine, and I would guess there is also some heavy formalwear in there), that's 150 items to mix and match. I wouldn't mind that kind of wardrobe, though it's not in my personal realm of reality.
Is it justified? Maybe -- not the prices, but the quantity, given the degree to which any candidate is recorded and scrutinized (wear the same thing twice in a 3-wk period? Eeks, what would the media watchers say?!). I just can't really bring myself to care too much ... after all, I'm happy to have the RNC waste as much of its money as it wants on things like clothes, rather than anti-Obama ads. Your average Republican donor might want to object, however. But yes, i do think it's the RNC's doing, not Palin's, so I wouldn't use it as a talking point against her.
*Methodology/information note for mrflip: forget gloves and scarves; she's traveling the lower 48. You left out the all-impt bags category! A "good" (designer) handbag will run you $500-1000 easy. I also would have upped the jackets & coats (and belts) with that accessories money.
PS - Maybe the RNC consultant interned with Harriet Walters.
More interesting than how much she spent on clothes, is the fact that you guys spent all this time analyzing such a worthless non-issue.
Oh shit, back from the dead! Droppin' bombs Portland-style. Y'all just got wiepooh'd! BOOM!
The best part is that I can hear the exact way that habcous would have said that in person.
All it took was an issue close to his heart: people wasting time.
WTF, the Duke of Azeroth lecturing people on wastes of time? I know you figured out how to use the Burning Crusade expansion pack to write your thesis, but unfortunately I lack the self-control to make use of efficiency tools like that.
As it turns out, I know exactly how much time it took:
- read email from mom, with
"Anyway, if you total up all my expenditures at Saks and Neimans, lifetime, adding in gift purchases over the years, you will not approach $150,000. I doubt we would get there if we added mom's tally into the mix."
- Sun, Oct 26, 2008 at 1:02 AM: quick email reply.
- realize how many clothes my mom has from Saks, Neiman Marcus, Jaeger, etc, and realize the $150k doesn't make sense.
(then, in roughly equal portions:) - .... scrape, convert, load into spreadsheet
- .... explore
- .... make summary tables
- .... write
- .... done: 04:36AM post to AE / Sun, Oct 26, 2008 at 4:47 AM, second reply with writeup
I spent seven hours earlier in the day canvassing and four doing some actual coding for work. For whatever weird reason my brain finds obsessive little quickies like this relaxing, which may partially explain why friends occasionally consult with me for help with programming projects.
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If they spent the money on clothes, it's a non-issue, absolutely. The delightful irony is that it's a non-issue that puts a lie to the many non-issues that have clouded this campaign.
It *is* an issue if they didn't spend the money as they claimed, and there's just no way to spend that much money on clothes for 65 days at stores in the Saks-Nieman price range.
@msc -- The suits ranged from $2700 down to $365. The low average price is across all the suits they sell -- necessary as they only have 36 models of suit, another reason the story doesn't hang together. Saks + Neiman's < 65 suits in her style.
Apologies all around. I certainly didn't mean for that comment to be such a slap in the face. I just have a hard time ascribing any importance to even the most nefarious use of $150K, given the current situation. Clearly, the number is surprising (at best), but using it to decide your political stance is like complaining about the shadow spec of your party's priest, while letting your tank run around in berserker stance without a shield.
Bravo, my friend.
Let the backbiting begin. You get the feeling she didn't come here to make friends. PALIN '12!
Palintologists report (please take the many anon. sources as grains of salt with this intoxicating schadenfreude margarita):
* Make that 200k
* Africa is a country, and two out of three ain't bad
Expect further updates to this list.
My favorite parts of the FOX story on Palin's ignorance are the reporter's use of "knowledgability" (twice) and reference to how she was added when McCain's shortlist was deemed "not inadequate".
My skepticism justified: much (?) of the "Africa is a country" thing is false.
Someone "leaked" it to Fox, who reported it; then Eisenstadt (who doesn't exist) claimed to be the source; then Eisenstadt (who doesn't exist) was revealed to not exist. Now nobody seems to know whether Africa is or is not a country or whether Palin ever took a stand on the matter.
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Also: PalinAsPresident.com put on ice (for now).
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We know her stylist was the highest paid member of the McCain campaign for the first two weeks of October but I wonder how much she pays per haircut?
posted by natedogg at 01:26PM CST on October 26