There are a lot of people who think signalling you care [about fashion, to be clear] is somehow essential, and that to not care about fashion is to show you don't care about life, or about yourself...

Sorry, no. There's nothing wrong with me for not putting effort into what aesthetic "signals" I'm sending, because there is no true signal. It's noise. If someone's unclean, that's one thing, because cleanliness matters to health. Fashion does not.

Arguments that fashion matters are all circular, which tells you something. (It matters because people think it matters, and is therefore worth taking seriously!)

Filtering out snobs just sounds like a bonus.

You have little nothing to offer people who have been in the field decades more than you. They don't care what signal they're broadcasting to you.

This.

Don Draper "I don't think about you at all" elevator meme in real life.

Originally a Coco Chanel quote: "I don't care what you think about me. I don't think about you at all."

Doreen dropping the knowledge. I just learned another fun Coco Chanel quote: "Those who create are rare; those who cannot are numerous. Therefore, the latter are stronger."

Little known fact: before he was Pied Piper's cool attorney in Silicon Valley, but after his first job at a Superstore, Ron LaFlamme lived in NYC where he was told that he "wasn't thought about at all" by Don Draper. https://youtu.be/LlOSdRMSG_k

Fashion is LITERALLY what you just defined.

If you want to look put together, put your body together first. Clothes are a cheap signal, one that many older people have given up caring about because clothes and appearance are less relevant at their age. And genuinely fit people look good in almost anything.