December 14, 2016

Please Explain a $795 Polo Shirt to Me

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In the middle of a story about Teresa May’s scandalous $1,250 leather trousers,1we get this:

President-elect Donald J. Trump had been able to fashion himself as a working-class hero despite his luxurious Brioni suits, which can cost as much as $17,000. Mrs. May’s predecessor, David Cameron, who….

Yikes! A $17,000 suit? Fine: I’m a yokel who doesn’t get clothes. But if you told me that Trump drove a $500,000 car, I probably wouldn’t blink. Still, I was curious, so I hopped over to the Brioni website. It turns out you can buy this gray continental three-piece suit for $5,250. Or you can buy this seemingly identical pinstripe version for $6,900. Someone help me out. Why do pinstripes cost $1,650?

But there’s more! Even if I don’t really get it, I sort of understand how a suit from a famous Italian designer can cost a fortune. But Brioni also sells other, more pedestrian stuff, like this burgundy polo shirt—for $795. I wonder if Trump owns any of these? And even in theory, what can you do to a polo shirt to make it worth $795?

For what it’s worth, if you want to Dress Like Trump™, the cheapest thing you can buy from Brioni is a baby-blue tie with an embroidered B on it. It’s only $230.

1Seriously. It’s called Trousergate.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

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