Remember "Fashiongate" or whatever everyone was calling it? Good times. If so, you'll probably recall that when Palin was raked over the coals for spending (jointly withe the RNC) the price of a small house on duds during a global recession, her sheepish spokeswoman was moved to say, "It was always the intent that the clothing go to a charitable purpose after the campaign," and make clear that anything Palin didn't end up wearing would be returned.

Yet! Some sources, apparently lurking at RNC headquarters in D.C., have spied the bags of clothing sitting around collecting dust. RNC types will only say that the glad rags have been duly inventories and are "in the process" of being donated. While this hardly qualifies as a major scandal, if it turns out they're not making good on their promise it could prove embarrassing to the big spenders whose money helped finance the wardrobe, many of whom were already disposed to think of it as a rather frivolous allocation of resources. Guys: the SalvA does pickup!

Palin's "Donated" Clothes Stashed in Trash Bags at RNC [The New Majority]

On the one hand, it's true — it is trickier for women to know what to wear for work. From the number of queries we've gotten here about appropriate work dress, I know that a workshop like the one at Ernst and Young, however problematic in principle, could actually be a godsend for women in a workplace who just want to be told what to wear for once, rather than trying to figure out what's appropriate. The fact that 400 women showed up could be proof of this — or did the workshop's very existence merely provoke a set of anxieties that hadn't existed before?

Anne Freden, chairman of Ernst & Young's women's network, says, "You don't want to be remembered as the woman with red lips, or leave people wondering, 'How does she walk on those heels?'" Well, sure, but most people probably don't have these reps: it doesn't take a course for most women not to wear a low-cut blouse to the office; it's called common sense. But apparently it is an issue for the company; says Freden: "There is a huge number of capable and talented women at Ernst & Young looking to maximise their achievement in the firm and in their career, and looking for the skills and tips and tools to do that...The firm doesn't view this as something that is nice to have, but as an integral part of the business strategy." Maybe that is what is worrisome about this: the implicit judgment — even threat — behind such policies.

Consider Fashiongate: while there was almost unilateral condemnation of the amount Sarah Palin managed to drop on clothes, many in the public eye themselves came to the governor's defense, talking about the unusual scrutiny placed on women's appearance. The attitude seemed to be, not merely does she need to look okay - she needs to look great. This is both a pressure — and in some dubious lights — advantage that male counterparts simply don't have. While no one wants to make a poor first impression in a professional context, some of what's troubling is the insinuation that a woman can use wiles — work her colors, sport designer — at the expense of those, be it men or other, less savvy females, who are simply professional.

Not to get Cold War on you, but all of this kind of makes me want a uniform — because it's not like we're dealing in self-expression here, anyway. Or at any rate, let's stop pretending "business casual" really allows us any freedom — clearly all these superficial relaxations have just created a hundred new pitfalls for women to look too sexy, not feminine enough, or insufficiently professional. When we're told, 'wear what you want, but what you want is wrong — take this optional class you all need'— well, can we just drop the charade already and bring on the dress codes? Some of that Socialist Chic wasn't half bad!

Female Accountants Sent On Course To Learn How To Dress Appropriately[Telegraph]
Clothes That Add Up: Female Accountants Are Taught To Dress For Success [Daily Mail]

• Lauren Conrad is On The Move, Azlan-style. After a prolonged period of alleged laziness, Conrad is promoting her eponymous clothing line all over our fifty states. [Yahoo]
• According to this Sun columnist's "hunch," Kate Moss is pregnant. Take that for what it's worth. [The Sun]
• According to model Niki Taylor — and her husband, doctor and uterus' hunch — she's pregnant too! [People]
• Fashiongate FAQ. [Washington Post]

• More signs of economic apocalypse: the cancellation of Fashion Rocks, CondeNast's annual fashion-rock concert-magazine. [AdAge]
• Here's how to get those undecided swing voters! "On Thursday morning, (Zac) Posen filmed a 15-second video urging people to vote, to vote for Barack Obama, and to dress for the occasion." [WWD]
• L'Oreal keeps its head above water, but cuts forecasts. [WSJ]
• There's hedging your bets, and then there's...this. In case they don't get Runway back, Bravo's introducing Fashion House, Celebrity Sew-Off and The Fashion Show, which sounds suspiciously like a Project Runway where viewers choose the winner. [Yahoo]
• Kate Moss, friend, rumored to be dressing up as Tina Turner, Cher for Halloween, kicks. [Fashionologie]
• "Where would Moss be without her languidly rockish locks?" Um, I don't know. Anyway, her hairdresser is releasing a budget line of hair products. So that we can continue to look nothing like her, on the cheap! [Guardian]
• Ferragamo does all the beautiful, 40s-style shoes for the epic film Australia. [W]
• As an army of Bettys and Joans can tell you tonight, Mad Men has had a serious influence on fashion. [LA Times]
• Charlotte Ronson for J.C. Penney is predictably darling. [Nylon]
• Speaking of cute fast fashion: Old Navy's latest plus-sized line is really pretty. [Fabsugar]
• On the other side of economic divide, Balenciaga's Nicolas Ghesquière ditches his celeb moddles. [New York Magazine]
• And the head of Chanel: “Even in tough times, people want to see beautiful and inspirational things." [Economist]
• Rami Kashou lectures at the Phillips Collection. Quoth the master-draper: "I want to talk about what it takes to keep a dream alive...What it's like to be a 5-year-old and have a dream." [Washington Post]
• Bottega Veneta gets into cruisewear. Believe it or not, more frequent collections is actually a Recession-proofing measure. [WWD]

• McCain campaign claims that it didn't keep a lot of those Fashiongate duds: "about a third of it was returned immediately" when they didn't fit. Yes, that'd be $50,000 worth. [AP]
• Roseanne offers a McCain-Palin Hitler smiley-face tee on her website. Genocide sensitivity: ur doin it rong. [Oh No They Didn't]
• Tom Ford makes over 007: “It was time for a change and, whereas Brioni is very polished, this new Bond is edgier and darker...Tom Ford’s tailored suits work better for him.” [FT]
• Sarah Jessica Parker's hard at work on her new fragrances, Lovely Moments. "The collection will include three fragrances based on different expressions of time — Dawn, Endless and Twilight." What? [WWD]

• Moscow Fashion Week is uncharacteristically subdued. [Reuters]
• Because shopping at French Connection is a good indicator of your civic acumen, the chain is offering a 15% discount to those who can prove they voted. Seems ripe for voter fraud to me... [Nylon]
• Kate Moss and Naomi Campbell are co-hosting a Halloween party. What happens when they both come dressed as the Queen? [Fashionista]
• Quoth the creative director of Moschino: "The glossy, glamorous and cool world of fashion have never particularly fascinated me: I adore fashion and many of its representatives not for those aspects but for the creativity, the research and the effort that remains behind every collection." This translates to a front row filled with stuffed animals. [IHT]
• Zara continues to defy the market. In a good way. [Reuters]
• Ditto Avon; a gal still needs her undereye concealer. [Business Week]
• Other stalwarts? Plain white shirts. "Fun" men's shirts are out. [Telegraph]
• Tailoring, however, is in! [NY Times]
• Not to be left behind the, um, phone craze, Ralph Lauren launches an iPhone app, should you wish to gaze at madras at your whim. [MobileCrunch]
• British designer complains she can't find Size 10 (that's a U.S. 6) models to walk in her shows. "I have always been someone who would request that model agencies send me their curviest girls. But this time even they were too tiny to fill a pair of size 10 trousers and make them look great." [Guardian]
• The economy's climate of "retail darwinism" takes its toll on experimental fashion. [Portfolio]
• The carnage continues: although Elle is strong, Elle Accessories is suspended, loses four staffers. [NY Magazine]
• WWD names Natasha Poly and Lily Donaldson "the hottest models of the season." [WWD]
• Twiggy: "Just because you’re middle-aged you don’t have to live in flannel knickers!" It does mean you have to diet, apparently! [Mirror]
• "Sitting at his kitchen table recently, Mr. Siriano mused that he had a few days ahead of him with no bookings. I am like, 'Am I out? Is everyone over me?' That's kind of scary.'" Don't worry, Christian, you're fierce! [Wall Street Journal]
• Clothing line gives 400 poor little babies rashes on their backs! [USA Today]
• Alexander McQueen: "I was thinking of the British Empire...because we don't have one any more. Of course, it's not right for one nation to govern another, but I have no other mentality apart from a British mentality. We've lost our way as a nation at the moment, I think, and I wanted to unify myself with Britain throughout history, and to celebrate any heritage. The idea was to look at tradition as opposed to being anarchic." Translation? Rock necklaces. [Independent]
• Ecko employee sues over sexual harassment after a male colleague allegedly "threw a fistful of coins down into the crack of her buttocks." [NY Post]
• Lagerfeld is lukewarm on the contents of his Chanel pavilion: "The pavilion is the most exciting. Whatever may be in there—that is not my problem.” [The New Yorker]

• We spent way too much time talking about Sarah Palin's sexy secretary garb and how much it cost and/or did not cost. But what we really want to know is how Palin gets her hair so big. Maybe her bouffant is built out of campaign secrets and the souls of unborn babies.
• Maybe all Sarah needs is a good talking to from Tyra and Judge Judy. Then she'd learn to keep her receipts in order!
• She has about as much sense as these crazy cat people. (We kid, we love them.)
• But probably a lot more sense than Elisabeth Hasselbeck, whose t-shirt wearing antics have torn The View asunder.
• Breaking: Goop makes us gassy.

• Maybe that's why these Urban Outfitters moddles look so bummed out: they're suffering from a severe case of soy farts!
• Also a bummer: potential voter suppression.
• Interviewing Sarah Haskings confirmed our suspicions that she is awesome.
• Attention It Girls, it's Friday. So rock out with your grillz out and have a great weekend.

In a rare interview with the Chicago Tribune yesterday, Palin asserted that she did not accept $150,000 worth of designer clothes from the Republican Party. "That is not who we are," she said. "That whole thing is just, bad! Oh, if people only knew how frugal we are. It's kind of painful to be criticized for something when all the facts are not out there and are not reported." Palin added that the clothes were bought for the Republican National Convention and that most of them haven't even left the plane.

So, wait? What "facts" is she talking about? Because she certainly has some pricey duds on, whatever's in the plane. The McCain campaign has released a statement claiming all clothes will be donated to charity, which pretty much seems to confirm that they did, in fact, buy them.

As Andrew Sullivan asks, "Is she saying they are not worth $150,000? Is she saying they were bought at a second-hand charity shop? Or that they were hers to begin with? Is she saying that these clothes were all bought before the convention and only worn then? Is she saying that they have actually remained on the airplane the entire time and we have been hallucinating her wearing them at every occasion? Is she saying that the RNC did not buy them, or that no campaign money was spent on them?"

Sullivan concludes it's the blathering of a congenital liar who can't deal with reality, but it almost seems like it might be a case of folks not getting their stories straight. From the get-go, fashion experts (yeah, I know) have stated that they didn't really see where all the money could have gone; the clothes we've seen are expensive, sure, but not that expensive. And here's where things get really murky: several of those stores where she was supposed to have spent the $150,000 deny having sold her anything. Not only did a Minnesota children's store deny having made a sale to Team Palin (which listed it as an expense)Quoth high-end men’s store Atelier New York, where the campaign allegedly spent five grand. presumably on the store's avant-garde fashion? After going through the store's receipts twice, the owner says, “We have no recollection of that sale and no idea what they are talking about.”

So, um, where did the money go then? And who's lying? Everybody? Just somebody? And why?

Well, if it did go to clothes, the issue may be a bigger one than just that of losing Main Street cred: Yesterday watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission against Palin and the RNC, claiming that the use of campaign funds for personal use — read: clothing for Palin and her family — violates the Federal Election Campaign Act.

Palin's response to all that? Apparently either a) flat-out lying, b) befuddlement c) madness. In any event, it's all because she's a woman and the sexist media's subjecting her to unfair scrutiny, just like her sister-in-arms Hillary Clinton, and she really doesn't want to talk about it so SHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUP!

"I think Hillary Clinton was held to a different standard in her primary race," Palin said. "Do you remember the conversations that took place about her, say superficial things that they don't talk about with men, her wardrobe and her hairstyles, all of that? That's a bit of that double standard...I'm not going to complain about it, I'm not going to whine about it, I'm going to plow through that, because we are embarking on something greater than that, than allowing that double standard to adversely affect us,"

Yeah, so says the fair-weather feminist — who, as we know, has had to deal with having thousands of dollars' worth of finery thrown upon her back by said sexist media. Had she failed to notice that her makeup artist is paid better than any of the campaign's policy advisors? That her campaign hasn't exactly shied away from promoting her attractions?

Palin's not wanting to address direct questions is hardly breaking news. But large sums of campaign donations unaccounted for? Stories not adding up? Inconsistent records? Kinda is. At best for the campaign, this is something ill-judged that's been made a lot worse by double-talk, prevarications and concealment, tangled-web style. At worst? Well, we don't know about the money, but "worst" has kind of already happened so far as Sarah Palin is concerned — any vestige of credibility, dignity and gravitas has pretty much gone up in a blaze of mysteriously-funded, only okay-looking designer threads. Never underestimate the power of clothes, people.

Palin Dismissed Wardrobe Extravagance Charge [Chicago Tribune]
The Odd Lies Of Sarah Palin XX: The Clothes, The Clothes [Andrew Sullivan]
Wardrobe Mysteries Linger [New York Times]
Palin's Wardrobe Expenses Prompt Complaint To FEC [McClatchyDC]
Palin Says Scrutiny Of Her $150,000 Wardrobe Is Sexist [Los Angeles Times]
Palin Away [VogueUK]
Palin stylist draws higher pay than policy adviser [AP]

How do you like your coverage? We've got everything from the straight to the analytical to the gleeful to the disgusted to predictably defensive statements by the McCain campaign. We've got commentary from other women in the public eye, stylists and prize-winning fashion writers.

And then of course there are all the servicey pieces! From high end — replicating Palin's spree at Saks and Neiman's (several times), attempting to spend $150k, to low end — creating her looks at Loehmann's and Wal-Mart! HuffPo helpfully puts the expenditures in terms of the average plumber's salary, ratio of clothes to Edwards-haircuts, typical American clothing budgets and "the cost of health care for 15 or so people." There are also polls and analyses of how much this would undercut her image, and photo essays of her ensembles.

For all this, the funny part is that there's really not that much to say. Here's the gist. Palin spent a ton on clothes, more than anyone can justify, even given arguments for the increased scrutiny on female politicians. She seems to have done so at a deliberate moment post-convention, once her Real American credentials had been established. She looks pretty good. But the timing could not be worse (global economic crisis, anyone?) and it flies directly in the face of her average Joe Six pack, hockey mom appeal just when the McCain campaign was trying to push a common touch agenda. Consensus? Republicans are pissed at the stupidity, McCain is pissed at having to talk about it, and whatever the eventual fallout, it's not good for them.

So, was it worth it? No. Obviously not. She doesn't look that different, she's undercut her sole selling point, and made herself look even more ridiculous. What was the RNC thinking? Having beaten the $400 haircut drum and played the elitism card with such enthusiasm, who could possibly have green-lighted this kind of excess, even were the economy not in free fall? Were they trying to make the most of her looks? Sure. Were they hoping to make her look like a politician? Probably. Was this shopping spree some kind of grotesque hail mary, a kind of attempt to bolster a crappy show with lavish sets and costumes? (And yes I know that's like five metaphors.) What's ironic about this is that in the past, Republicans have successfully marketed rich men of privilege like Reagan and George W. Bush as simple men of the people. And yet, they've taken a Sarah Palin and dressed her like a rich person!

I keep thinking about Stylista, the new show where magazine sophisticates whip kids into stylish shape. "Wearing the right label doesn't make something right," they say at one point to the designated villain. Meanwhile, the girl showing too much cleavage wails that she "loves her clothes" and "loves the way she looks in them," while the others pressure her into wearing something more tasteful and appropriate. They send the contestants to H&M and have them put looks together to show they have real style. Obviously the RNC didn't have that kind of confidence in their VP nominee. And sure enough, they'll pay through the nose.

Sarah Palin's $150,000 Makeover [BBC]
Sarah Palin's RNC-Funded Makeover: A Fashion Do Or Don't? [LA Times]
Palin's Fashion-Gate [WWD]
Republicans Disgusted By RNC Spending On Palin [Marc Ambinder]
For Women In The Public Eye, Looks Matter [CNN]
Stylist: Palin Fashion Buys Worth It [Politico]
After A $150,000 Makeover, Sarah Palin Has An Image Problem [Washington Post]
How To Spend $150,000 At Saks And Neiman Marcus [NY Mag]
The Saks Girls On Sarah Palin [Newsweek]
How To Spend $150,000 Just Like Sarah Palin [Slate]
If Sarah Palin Shopped For Her Campaign Clothes At Walmart… [The Frisky]

Palin Clothes Spending Has Dems Salivating, Republicans Disgusted [HuffPo]
Poll: Is Sarah Palin Elitist? [Guardian]
Look Is The Same; The Labels Have Changed [NY Times]
Sarah Palin's RNC-Funded Makeover: A Fashion Do Or Don't? [LA Times]
McCain Responds To Palin Shopping Bill [Time]