The campaign-managing, despot-courting, tax-dodging jawnz enthusiast, Paul Manafort, was officially found guilty on eight felony tax evasion and bank fraud charges on Tuesday, and in honor of the proceedings — and his now extensively documented, and utterly batshit wardrobe – GQ’s Cam Wolf sat down with the guy who sold him most of that stuff.
29 year old Maximilian Katzman — of course that’s his name — used to be just another high-end, Manhattan-based tailor, but he was thrust into the limelight a couple weeks ago, when he was called to testify in his former client’s trial. Katzman’s old store, Alan Couture, it turned out, was the source of Manafort’s infamous $15,000 ostrich leather jacket, as well as about $900,000 worth of other equally tasteless garbs.
Overall, Katzman is pretty much who you’d expect the peddler of such egregiously expensive and tacky clothes to be. He nonchalantly claims that “more interesting things have happened to me” when asked about testifying in the Manafort trial, and he shrugs off his former client’s affinity for exotic leathers, saying “everyone’s entitled to their own taste.”
He also called Manafort’s $929,000 bill from 2010-2014 “normal,” because in his world, that figure is, as Wolf put it, “unremarkable.” And as gross as that last revelation is, it’s kind of comforting in a weird way, too. No matter how hard Manafort tried to ratfuck his way back into the mainstream politico elite, he and his extravagant lifestyle were still “unremarkable” to a random suit dealer in Manhattan. And hopefully that stings at least just a little bit.
You can read more about it at GQ.
