INVOICE STEVE SCHMIDT! Palin (Photo: Getty Images)
By Neel Shah 09/17/08 3:00 PM
"Average hockey mom" Sarah Palin' choice of wardrobe at the Republican National Convention was not so befitting of an average hockey mom, Page Six reported today [ http://www.nypost.com/seven/09172008/gossip/pagesix/sarah_has_secret_style_team_129403.htm ]. Her jacket was a $2,500 "shantung silk" number from Italian designer Valentino! By contrast, the designer dress Michelle Obama took flack for wearing cost $900 [ http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/08/fashion/08michelle.html ]. That's not the least of it: while the Times notes that "Michelle Obama apparently pulls off the feat of getting dressed on her own," Palin seemingly employs a "secretive circle of stylists who dress her for events."
Those sartorial guns-for-hire aren't cheap, either. Since Page Six doesn't hazard a guess as to how much Palin actually spent pulling together her "look" for the RNC, we asked the styling team of Jill Bream and Carmel Lobello—they've worked with Jay-Z and Pink, among others—to estimate the total dollar amount invested in Palin folksy, blue-collar aesthetic:
Page Six doesn't say how many stylists Palin uses, other than to describe she has a "styling team." Bream says that a typical team consists of one head stylist, two assistants, and then a "glam squad" (hair and makeup.) A head stylist who works with A-list celebrities (like Barack Obama!) can charge up to $3,000 a day, but it's doubtful that Palin is using Rachel Zoe. Her guess is around $1,000. A decent day rate for assistants is $275 each, for a total $1,550.
Hair and makeup is actually more expensive. The Los Angeles Times described Palin's look [ http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-ig-notebook7-2008sep07,0,7585060.story ] as "a study in contrasts, carefree and 'done' at the same time.... [it] says, 'I have more important things to do than worry about my hair, so I just twirled it into this clip so I could get to the real business of governing and shooting caribou and having babies and taking them to hockey practice.'" Don't confuse "carefree" with "cheap," though: Bream and Lobello estimate that the hair and makeup experts who prepped Palin for her big moment probably charged anywhere between $2,000 to $4,000 for a day's work. (An important add-on: since it was such a momentous occasion, Bream and Lobello say it's likely that the hair and makeup people were brought in a few days before to "test some different things out." They charge a full day rate for that, "unless they're being nice, in which case they'll charge half.")
If you're doing the math at home, that means that Sarah Palin spent anywhere from $4,550 (one stylist, two assistants, and a friendly "half rate" for the hair and makeup test day) to $9550 (one stylist, two assistants, two full days for high-end hair and makeup). Let's split the difference and say she spent $7,050.
That's before the $2,500 Valentino, mind you.
Copyright 2008, Radar Magazine (emphasis in original)
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