Describing your character’s dress and appearance can be the sign of poor writing taste – but not if you do it in the right context, as a Harvard Business School study has just confirmed.
When writing a story, having a character know what the norms are and being able to conform or break them, and how others react to this, can help a story. While some dress differently “to communicate that they are different or worthy of attention”, the exact effects have been found in a psychological study.
And it led to interesting results relevant to writers.