Memo Pad: Palin's Closet Full of Trouble... A Steady Slide... Mags Go Live...

A TALE OF TWO CLOSETS: Fashion-Gate just won’t go away for vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin. Now it turns out the candidate might have unwittingly prompted legal troubles for her favorite hometown consignment shop when she name-dropped it on national television last week. In a Fox News interview on Friday, the vice presidential nominee attempted to distance herself from reports that the Republican National Committee had spent $150,000 on her campaign clothes by touting her family’s thrifty ways. Palin told Sean Hannity that she is a frequent customer of Out of the Closet, an Anchorage clothing reseller. Unfortunately for the Alaskan shop, Los Angeles-based AIDS Healthcare Foundation has operated charity resale stores under the same name in California and Florida since 1990. It registered the moniker as a trademark in 1997. In a teleconference Monday, the group, which describes itself as the nation’s largest HIV and AIDS nonprofit, said it sent a cease and desist letter to the Anchorage store. It also threatened a trademark suit if it wasn’t appeased, and invited Palin to donate her campaign wardrobe to its own Out of the Closet operations after the election. The Out of the Closet shop to the north did not return a call seeking comment. — Matthew Lynch