Sure I agree with you on this, and I didn't intend for my comment to sound like there's no case for dressing nicely beyond signaling. When I said that the side requiring justification is that of dressing nicely, personal explanations like yours are exactly the kind of thing I was thinking of.

What I was arguing against is the maximizing impulse on the _other_ end: the notion that it's so self-evidently universally valuable that the primary reason to not dress well would be Virtue signaling.

That comment you linked to is just flat bullshit. People who desperately try to justify strict old-fashioned dress codes somehow conflate "you can literally lose your job if you don't dress this way" with "I feel awkward being the only person dressed this way, even in the absence of anyone else's reaction". It's insane to me that so many people uncritically parrot this utter nonsense.