On Tuesday the trial for Paul Manafort, Donald Trump’s former campaign manager, began in Alexandria, Virginia. Facing a bevy of bank and tax fraud charges, prosecutors attempted to paint a picture of a man who eschewed paying taxes on tens of millions of dollars he made in lobbying work for a pro-Russia politician in Ukraine to fund a lavish lifestyle for himself. Among the expenses detailed in the indictment in February were $849,000 he spent at a clothing store in New York and another $520,000 in Beverly Hills, not to mention, as prosecutors said in an opening statement in court, multi-million dollar homes, fancy cars and antique carpets.
“He got whatever he wanted,” US attorney Uzo Asonye told the jury. Perhaps anticipating that big houses and fast cars wouldn’t persuade jurors that Manafort had engaged in anything beyond normal rich guy behavior – indeed judge TS Ellis III expressed as much, interjecting: “It isn’t a crime to have a lot of money and be profligate in your spending” – Asonye also zeroed in on a few peculiar items among the litany of extravagances. One in particular stood out from the rest: a $15,000 ostrich jacket.
The reveal of the ostrich jacket led to a flurry of jokes on social media, and on late night television. “That should be what he has to wear in jail,” Jimmy Kimmel said Tuesday night. “That should be his only article of clothing. Just sitting in a cell dressed up like Big Bird, waiting for the trial to start.”
A number of publications tried to uncover the provenance of the jacket in question – a bit of sleuthing from Jezebel posited that the jacket might be Gucci’s ostrich leather biker jacket, which they found retailed for $14,500 back in 2012. Various politicians and celebrities such as Ted Cruz, author Buzz Bissinger and Victoria Beckham, whose Hermès Birkin bag made from ostrich leather costs tens of thousands of dollars, are devotees of ostrich garments themselves, as the Washington Post pointed out.
For the average person, a $15,000 jacket of any kind indeed seems like a wild indulgence. But if you ask people who work in ostrich leather, such as Henry Slaughter – “an appropriate name for this industry,” he joked – the owner of Ostrich Alligator Market in Melbourne, Florida, a few hours’ drive across the state from where Trump held a rally last night, Manafort’s jacket sounds, well, a bit underwhelming. He may as well have bought it at a street stall in New York’s Chinatown.
“That’s nothing,” Slaughter said of the price tag, noting that ostrich leather, like the alligator and crocodile skins he regularly works with to produce bags, boots and motorcycle seats, is one of the most expensive in the world.
“An ostrich jacket, if it’s custom-made? Fifteen thousand dollars is pretty cheap.”
“Ostrich leather, historically any of what’s called the exotic skins, are going to be expensive: python, ostrich alligator. You’re automatically paying a premium over pig skin or some cowhide,” he said. “Ostrich never goes out of style. They used to do interiors in automobiles in ostrich. Rolls Royces in the 1930s used to be all ostrich interiors, and it’s still being used on motorcycle seats.”
The industry for ostrich farming has been a turbulent one, rising and falling over the decades. In the 18th century, ostrich feathers were so popular among women that the bird nearly disappeared from North America, according to the African Wildlife Foundation. Thirty years ago, the Chicago Tribune reported, an American resurgence in ostrich farmers emerged but grew too quickly, with the market for ostrich meat, believed to be a leaner, healthier alternative to beef, becoming oversaturated.
“They didn’t have a clue what they were doing,” Slaughter said of the industry’s rapid collapse. “The problem is, the meat never caught on with Americans. That’s what hurt.”
There aren’t many ostrich farms left in the US, he added, noting that “everybody knows South African ostrich is the best”.
Processing ostrich skin is a more delicate process than other more traditional animals whose hides are used in leather production, and takes a level of patience and precision that adds to the cost in the end.
When asked how the price of ostrich skin compared to other animals, Slaughter couldn’t say. “When you’re talking to any of us who sell exotic skins, you’re talking to Ferrari dealers,” he said. “If I went in a Ferrari shop I don’t think the salesman has a clue what a Ford Taurus costs.”
Asked whether or not the idea of Manafort wearing such an expensive coat bothered him, as a business owner in the middle of Trump country, Slaughter demurred.
“I’m surprised Manafort got that cheap a jacket, since he lives well. I’d assume he’d spend $50,000.”