What do bad clothes signal about you?

To those who read Wei Dai's post:

Keep in mind that what you are signaling to others is not what you intended to signal, but the message that others receive. Perhaps you want to signal that "costly signaling is mostly a zero-sum game and I like to opt out of zero-sum games", but that's almost certainly not the signal that anybody else is actually receiving.

More likely, by wearing clothes that don't fit and don't match, the signal that most people are receiving is:

I don't care enough about social skills to invest energy into fashion, and so you can raise your probability that I haven't invested energy into other social skills, either. If you talk to me, there is a greater probability that I will create an awkward situation than if you talk to somebody who is clearly fashionable. I am also more likely to exhibit other effects of lack of investment into social skills.

And remember, most of this isn't conscious. If you haven't studied this stuff explicitly, most likely what happens when somebody walks into the room who is badly dressed and walks with a hunch is a visceral feeling inside of you that you don't have much desire to talk to that person and they make you a little bit uncomfortable. In contrast, if somebody walks into the room with open body language and good fashion and a big smile and a straight back, you're more likely to feel like you want to be around that person and will have fun as a result of interacting with them. (I'm using 'you' in an arbitrary sense to talk about any particular person in a social situation.)

There are signaling benefits to dressing poorly, but if you're reading Less Wrong's discussion forums I'd set a very high prior on your error being on the side of undervaluing fashion rather than overvaluing it. This is coming from a person whose wardrobe is in large part things handed out for free at tournaments.

I have a suspicion you're just trying to rationalize your existing mode of behavior.

Those attempting to ignore fashion might say "function over form", yet the form of clothes have quite a bit of function: social affiliation, likeability, attractiveness, and other important aspects of dealing with humans are directly affected by fashion. My recent research on the topic suggests that it's a highly specialized field, requiring a great deal of continuing research and effort to understand in depth.

The issues of concern are:

• Fit. How well does the item conform to your body shape? This is critically important and yet very difficult to assess in a quantifiable or repeatable way, and is therefore the area where an expert would make the most difference. Of note, tailoring an existing item can be very cheap, as little as $5 to $15 for shirt alterations (of course there are many that charge more), with much to learn from the tailor's advice.

• Quality / Cost. The fabric used, the location and process of manufacture, the conformity to accepted standards, and the dollar cost. Most purchases by the fashion conscious are done using sales, and the "retail price" is the sucker price. ("Nobody pays retail.") Bespoke (custom, or personally made for you) items are generally at the top, though also high cost.

• Currency. A "modern" fit, meaning conformity to current style decisions regarding lengths, widths, color matching, and type matching. (Note that there are several mentions of conforming, and none of comfort.) Individual items are often referred to as S/S 11 (Spring/Summer 2011) or F/W 10 (Fall/Winter 2010), indicating a two season per year refresh rate on the exact meaning of "modern". This is the primary reason it requires continuing research; avoiding this and remaining stylish requires use of "classics".

• Details. Once the basics are covered, the details make a big difference. The lining, the hint of different colors, patterns vs. solids, vents, hems, etc. This is often the accepted place to show individuality.

• Patina. Items straight out of a box are good for being generally impressive and showing a pristine appearance, but often the 'life' of an item comes through after many uses, shown as scuffs, fades, wrinkles, even stains or rips, telling a story about that item and its owner. Patina is why ripped jeans can be stylish.

There are many very specific rules which fall outside of this, such as which colors, patterns, or styles to wear for which occasions ('business casual', 'law firm', 'weekend', 'prom', 'street'). They're too many to easily enumerate, culturally specific, and I haven't yet found a place which tries to lay out "consolidated wisdom".

Stores are ranked by their ability to produce the cheapest clothing with the highest rating - good fits out of the box using quality materials at sale prices. Many fashion followers have "grail" items, things which are out of their price range, but they wish to acquire. They also tend to have extensive collections for mixing and matching: closets full of shoes or 8 sweaters that are barely different, showing signs of potential hoarding and materialism. It's easy for many such people to spend thousands of dollars on a single item, such as a pair of boots or a handbag.

Fashion is dangerous territory for anyone with a desire to min / max; it's subject to threshold effects, constant change, and diversification requirements. There's normally a large gap between 'basic quality' items you can buy at mall stores and 'good quality' items from luxury stores. For example, there's many basic quality leather or canvas handbags in the $40 to $150 range, but to go up a tier, you'd have to hit $1000 or more; pretty much everything in the $150 to $1000 range is of $40 to $150 quality. Bargain hunting, used by true fashion followers to acquire such items, requires significant time and effort. Which names are worth the money also changes over time, with some switching from top quality to using flimsy leather, third-world workers and mechanical stitching, or YKK instead of RiRi zippers, without letting anyone know, requiring individual inspection.

To get back on the topic of signalling, clothes rank third behind grooming and body type when discussing personal appearance. Getting a nice haircut, being cleanly, smelling good, exercising, and controlling your diet make more difference, and cost much less in dollar terms, though they take much more time. This fits with a signalling theory that primary signals are related to difficult-to-fake costs: how much time you've put in to look the way you do, with dollars (purchased items) being a proxy, easier to fake, allowing patina to add value.

With clothing, the rules are more often broken or ignored, especially for many areas outside of large population centers - people simply dress like those around them, with what their parents style them as, or with what they have access to in the immediate area. It's often stated on the fashion forums I've lurked for months now: "98 percent of people don't care about this stuff and won't notice the difference."

Conforming to the basics seems like a much easier goal.

Another important observation is that there are at least two very different ways of dressing "badly." One is dressing in a tacky and sloppy way with complete disregard for aesthetics, and the other involves breaking the conventions of formal wear but still dressing neatly and stylishly. The latter, I think, can be a useful signaling device in some situations where adherence to formal wear may lower your status by making you look like you're trying hard to please others.

The prime example would be situations like job interviews (especially in technical fields), where you're expected to dress up, but those you have do deal with are not, because they enjoy a position of superiority. When you show up for those wearing something obviously more formal than what you wear on a daily basis, you signal that you're trying hard to please the people you have to deal with. A much better signal can be achieved by dressing in a stylish but less formal way that signals all the right things in terms of social aptitude etc., but makes you look less like a supplicant, especially if it looks plausible that this is how you actually dress on a daily basis.

Of course, this can backfire if you exaggerate with informality, or if you use a wrong sort of casual style.

Michael Vassar has advocated wearing a fashionable, well-fitting suit with Vibram Fivefingers to properly countersignal--since without showing the capability of properly signaling, the "counter" part is lost.

Costly signaling is mostly a zero-sum game. I like to opt out of zero-sum games.

I wouldn't choose to signal this via not dressing well. Its too many inferential steps for most people, and clothing doesn't have to be super costly. Dressing to look better than other people might be zero sum, but I doubt if just dressing well is.

Dressing well is not entirely a zero sum game. Depending on how you look, you create a positive or negative externality on other people around you by making their environment more or less aesthetically pleasing. This also has clear signaling implications, separate from those status signaling issues that you have in mind.

Have you ever found yourself thinking "this person sounds interesting but they are just dressed too well to take seriously"?

For people inculcated from a young age with a desire to be perfect along all possible dimensions, dressing well is essential and you will get a huge self-confidence (non-self-loathing?) boost from doing so. (I imagine such inculcation is a lot more common among LW folk than most.)

Fashion is the intersection of social skills and aesthetics as applied to clothing. Fashion and style matter for the same reason that social skills and aesthetics matter. Lukeprog gave a good summary of how people will rationally make judgments about you based on your appearance.

You can't "opt out" of fashion anymore that you can opt out of web design. There is a reason why the web no longer looks like this. Regardless of whether clothing is a zero-sum game, it's a pervasive enough game that trying to opt out doesn't let you escape: it just makes you lose.

I have the same suspicion as lucidfox. Also,

Costly signaling is mostly a zero-sum game. I like to opt out of zero-sum games.

This is self-defeating, no? Dressing badly to send a signal is costly signaling.

It's not clear what you mean by dressing "badly". I'd agree that it can be advantageous to dress "badly", as long as you do it right.

This post commits the relation projection fallacy with respect to the word "signal," which isn't a two-place predicate but a three-place predicate (at least): the well-formed sentence isn't "X signals Y" but "X signals Y to audience Z." Two values of Z that might be relevant to LessWrongers are "rationalists" and "most people," and there's no reason to expect the answers to be similar in the two cases. For Z = "most people," options 1 and 3 in particular strike me as wishful thinking.

Barack Obama is an example of someone whose time is much better spent not thinking about what to wear, but that doesn't imply that he dresses poorly (because he also recognizes the obvious importance of his dress as a signal):

You need to remove from your life the day-to-day problems that absorb most people for meaningful parts of their day. “You’ll see I wear only gray or blue suits,” he said. “I’m trying to pare down decisions. I don’t want to make decisions about what I’m eating or wearing. Because I have too many other decisions to make.” He mentioned research that shows the simple act of making decisions degrades one’s ability to make further decisions. It’s why shopping is so exhausting. “You need to focus your decision-making energy. You need to routinize yourself. You can’t be going through the day distracted by trivia.

How about this:

-6. I buy my clothes from thrift stores (which explains why they don't quite fit, and aren't "in fashion") because I'm more concerned with social/environmental/economic responsibility than I am fashion.

I think the dressing well vs badly dichotomy may be misleading here, a better analogy might be with similarity to certain archetypes.

For example neither Barack Obama or Justin Timberlake dress 'badly' but he way they dress is radically different. So if you want to alter your social perceptions dress in a manner similar to the archetype most relevant to your goals.

Applying this, if you are in a university environment your goals might be wanting the professor to treat your work favourably, and possibly be lenient in cases. Hence you can choose similarity to the archetypes "Lazy student" (Stained t-shirt, baggy trousers) or "Academic" (Shirt, neat but non flashy clothes). This can be generalized to other environments and social signalling situations.

There's dressing 'well' and there's dressing 'normally' (within the norm of your social group). Sometimes, dressing well for a subculture is dressing bad for the social norm.

The best algorithm I know of to handle all the dressing well area is:

1) identify the subculture you normally are a part of and that you most like to be a part of;

2) identify the general trend of each subculture and learn when they 'fire' (when it's proper they're active and they're not);

3) lower the mental cost of signaling-by-dress, by buying a proper single clothe you like once every 2/3 weeks.

There's different "levels" of dressing well. For example, with respect to point 1, not everybody who dresses well puts a lot of effort into it or looks like they put a lot of effort into it. Somebody can dress very simply and effortlessly and be considered well dressed. Somebody else might put a lot of obvious attention into how they dress and look awful (i.e., a "fashion victim"). (To make matters more confusing you can spend $2000+ on a t-shirt, jeans and canvas shoes. So you can look casually and simply dressed but be very self-conscious about it.) There's also the difference between looking like a slob and exhibiting some sort of care and attention about how you look. In certain situations looking like a slob can be taken as a sign of hostility (i.e., showing up to a meeting or formal gathering looking disheveled). It's also usually possible to tell the difference between someone who is indifferent to their appearance (they might still be considered attractive, for example) and somebody who is an incompetent dresser (i.e., they've made an effort but it's all wrong). People often spend a lot of time trying to signal apparent indifference (this is common among male celebrities).

I think if the way you dress sends negative signals, you probably want to address it. Figuring out whether that's the case may not be easy.

I have typically sought advice (and occasionally received unsolicited advice) from fashion-aware women, most of whom are happy to demonstrate their domain expertise. This has proven to be an efficient strategy that produces good results for relatively low cost. Most of the men I know that dress well rely on a similar strategy; the dearth of men who are savvy at this suggests a somewhat complex signaling game at work.

Take advantage of specialization. It is no different than when individuals solicit advice for me on a matter about which I am perceived as knowledgeable. People enjoy demonstrating their expertise.

Unfortunately none of us knew much about the topic so the discussion turned into "how can we find an expert to advise us for minimal cost?

You don't need an expert, go into a shop where you can buy clothes and ask some sales women/girl to help you dress. Tell them for what occasion you want to get dressed. This will work well enough (i.e. much better than what you would be able to come up with yourself and its free).

Hahaha, I agree that bad clothes can sometimes be an good signal of rationality. I actually know 4 professors here who wear socks with sandals.

On the other hand, though, there are certain clothing combinations that a significant fraction of people can't stand (that being said, I know a number of people who can't stand fashionable clothes like high heels either). Sometimes, a certain set of clothes can make someone less willing to talk to you, which can translate into a lost opportunity. Now, whether that set of clothes coincides with the set of non-fashionable clothing by the population you're potentially interested in - that's an open question

Michael Vassar has advocated wearing a fashionable, well-fitting suit with Vibram Fivefingers to properly countersignal--since without showing the capability of properly signaling, the "counter" part is lost.

Can anyone deny that neckties are the worst invention in the history of man? Why are they not hung from the crotch rather than the neck? Is a bowtie a functional but diminutive member, compared to the flaccid tree trunk that appears to have won out?

Evidence: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blMN_9ZtxsY