It was a “trumped up controversy,” she writes. “I never asked the New York stylists to purchase clothes, many of the items were never worn, many others were intended for the use of other people, and in the end the wardrobe items were all returned. It certainly wasn’t true that I or my family had been on any kind of ‘big-time shopping trips.’ ”

All true, Ms. Kline said this week. Her reticence so far, she said, was out of respect to a client. But now that Ms. Palin herself is discussing her unidentified “New York stylist,” Ms. Kline would like to clarify a few details, which she did first in an interview for the campaign biography “Sarah From Alaska” by Scott Conroy and Shushannah Walshe, published this month…

In other circumstances, Ms. Kline said, she could have bought Ms. Palin’s wardrobe for far below retail through her relationships with designers. But it was the Friday of a holiday weekend and “there wasn’t a person around,” she said. “The only avenue was retail, straight retail.”

She set to work in New York, buying elegant pieces at Saks Fifth Avenue and Barneys. When she left for the convention Labor Day morning, she had “a pretty decent amount of clothing to choose from,” she said.