Start with a rose bush. Or a peacock. Why would any species waste so much energy on appearance? The Handicap Principle says the harder it is to signal the more honest the signal is "Look how much I can afford to waste therefore I must be fit"
From that emerging at the individual level, when we move to group level, we get things like Veblen’s Theory of the Leisure Class.
Look at what I eat. Look at where I live. Look at who I spend time with. Look at all my toys, my hobbies, my mate. And naturally look at what I wear, and what I spend on my mates appearance. Each is a small piece of that same signal - Look how much I can afford to waste so I must be fit. Think of the military medals, religions rituals, the judiciary robes, the scientist lab coat, the elaborate parades and buildings they need to be housed in etc etc. Every system invents its own costume to show who belongs and who leads.
Veblens theory came out a century ago and he predicted tech (rooted in efficiency/optimization/waste elimination) would disrupt or dilute the need for all this. But the opposite happened. Tech made signaling cheaper, faster, and global. Everyone is running some kind of circus act cause its become easy to do.
As Attention available is finite and bounded by number of people and hours in a day, we enter arms race territory. Things get more and more ridiculous.
But what goes out of focus in all the attention wars is signaling was never about waste. It was about cohesion.
In any group, people differ by a lot in strength, wealth, beauty, luck etc etc. Biology says this leads to violence/schisms/chaos. But social signaling creates a pecking order that keeps the peace. There is silent agreement you look the part, you get to lead - you like what you see me doing then do what I tell you to do.
Fashion plays a big role in building hierarchy. So even commie and egalitarian groups end up doing a whole lot of signaling. Through it, there is constant testing who notices, who approves, who follows.
Most of the cost of this system falls on women. Cuz thro history the rules of beauty have been written mostly by men and enforced through fashion.
In classics like Herland or Sultanas Dream the question that gets pushed is what happens if women designed the rules themselves? Such thought experiments imagine worlds ruled by women and how the signaling becomes less about power/status/hierarchy maintenance and more about cooperation, play, self expression. Until these experiments run in practice the peacocks shall still strut.
