This post from the NYT Caucus blog raises two urgent questions, 1) WTF is aggressively directional men’s wear, 2) What did the Palins’ RNC-endowed fashion splurges actually buy?

Some of the fashion experts consulted Wednesday, for instance, about the $150,000 in purchases that appeared on Federal Election Commission records were puzzled by where all of that money had gone, given what they had seen of Ms. Palin’s wardrobe.
 
Consider also the $4,902.45 charge at Atelier New York, a high-end men’s store, presumably for Ms. Palin’s husband, Todd, the famous First Dude.
 
Karlo Steel, an owner there, said he had gone through the store’s receipts for September, twice, and found no sales that matched that amount, nor any combination of sales that added up to the total. Because the store carries aggressively directional men’s wear, he caters to a small clientèle and knows most of his customers by name, as well as the history of their purchases.
 
When The Caucus called Mr. Steel back to ask him to also check August sales just in case, Mr. Steel said he found one purchase that came close to the amount in the campaign finance reports but said that he knew who that customer was and it certainly was not Mr. Palin. Neither was it Jeff Larson, the Republican consultant who showed up in campaign finance records as the one who footed the initial bill before being reimbursed by the R.N.C. [NYT]