Blinded by the intense and everlasting love of fashion, it's sometimes hard to see the harm in trading a few little old political favors for some designer fashions that you otherwise couldn't afford. Surely, some of us here at Style List would be willing to let indicted style addict and former mayor of Birmingham Larry Langford off easy for his transgressions. Still, when the mayor of a major city accepts bribes -- even in the form of high end designer clothes -- most people would call that official corruption.

The mayor of Birmingham -- who has a reputation for being a snazzy dresser, btw -- was arrested by federal agents Monday for allegedly accepting $230,000 in cash, clothing, and jewelry (mostly in clothes), in exchange for steering lucrative bond contracts to a favored firm owned by William Blount.

Blount, also arrested, and his firm took in about $7.1M from the county financing deals in exchange for buying Mayor Langford high-end clothes, and paying off outstanding debts at boutiques and clothing stores in New York as well as around Birmingham.

So where did the mayor spend all that ill-gotten money? And what did he spend it on? For starters, Blount bought him a $12,015 watch at Tourneau New York. Then he paid a $895 bill at Salvatore Ferragamo. Then he dropped $4,250 at Langford's favorite store in Birmingham, Remon's Clothier. That was all in about 5 days.

The ledger is filled with transactions just like those, dating from 2002-2006. Yikes. Well, at least Langford had good taste. Sort of.

[via Manolo]