Some people say that it is possible to tell a lot about a person’s culture and character from their choice of clothes. Do you agree or disagree?

Question

There is a view that one’s culture and personality can be judged simply by the clothes he is in. In my opinion, although it is not impossible to established these crucial details of a person via his dress sense, the information is not always accurate, especially when it comes to these internal points.

Firstly, it is important to admit that appearance is a way of denoting people’s background and nature. As people in different cultures and religions wear various styles of clothes, accessories and religious garments, it is possible to identify which culture they are living in instead of another. For instance, a man wearing white coat and blouse is considered to be steeped in medical profession as we associate this field with white. Because clothing is believed to signify one’s culture and interests, we can make quick decision on their characteristics.

Having said that, seeing clothes as a mean to find out about others’ inner lives is sometimes deceptive. As clothes are the things that attract us and make first impressions when seeing strangers, we may fail to decide their dispositions. For example, an imposter can dress smartly and take advantage of this incorrect reflection of clothes to disguise his guilty. After all, we are told not to judge a book by its cover because there are not much that we can discover about a person by the outlook.

In summary, though external appearance symbolizes people’s internal personality, the information we get is only informative up to a point and we may experience the risk of misjudgment.