The XX Factor: What women really think.

Did Cindy McCain Really Wear a $300,000 Outfit?

Speaking of feeling sorry for Cindy McCain, I felt a spasm of pity for the woman during the GOP Convention, when Vanity Fair’s “Politics & Power” blog published a post called “Cindy McCain’s $300,000 Outfit” claiming that one of her looks—the mustard-colored one, with the evil-countess collar—cost 300 grand. The sensational figure quickly got picked up by the Huffington Post, Talking Points Memo, the Los Angeles Times, even U.S. News and World Report; one HuffPo commenter railed: “THIS LADY IS PERFECT EXAMPLE OF THE 'LET THEM EAT CAKE' AND 'LATTE DA' MENTALITY OF BOTH THE BUSHIES AND MAC AND WIFE.” 

But the claim—republished everywhere—was just a guess! Vanity Fair’s “fashion department” estimated prices for most of Cindy’s clothes and accessories, and said her earrings, if real, were three-carat diamonds worth $280,000. The sum is plausible for a pair of earrings that size (I called Harry Winston, which had a particularly high-quality pair on sale for a cool half-million), but every diamond expert I consulted, from Norman Landsberg in New York’s diamond district to Jim Shigley at the Gemological Institute of America, said it is impossible to estimate the size of a diamond—and even to tell whether it is synthetic or natural—from a photograph. “How would anybody actually know unless they had the earrings in their hand to examine them?” Landsberg said. “It would just be an incorrect guess.” One point of difficulty: Diamonds come in different shapes and can be broad but shallow, or relatively narrow but deeper, so it’s tough to accurately estimate carat size even if you can make a good guess about the diameter of a gem in its setting. The editor of Vanity Fair’s site, Michael Hogan, said the figures came from “a source who is a major player in the diamond industry” who “provided the estimates for the number of carats and the price.” But unless the source is the guy who sold Cindy the studs, the guess has a pretty big margin of error.

So: Cindy may well have been wearing jewelry that cost more than a house. (When Slate e-mailed the campaign to ask, it never responded.) But perhaps, conscious that her husband had recently taken flak for wearing $500 loafers, she opted for fakes. Or perhaps the earrings were a gift. Or an heirloom. Or something she bought years ago, for much less. The point is, we don’t know. Vanity Fair was candid that it was just publishing estimates, but that didn't stop the figure from ricocheting around the Web. The whole flap struck me as a new low in price-tag journalism—the already basement-level practice of reporting on the cost of political figures’ haircuts, glasses, and clothes. I understand our obsession with what politicians spend, but we shouldn’t bash Cindy for extravagance when we don’t really know the details.