When you have a properly equal society, everyone knows how to dress properly. A very wealthy American friend of mine who knows France well, travels to Paris a lot, once remarked of his frustration at the fact it was impossible for him to tell, based on how a Parisienne dressed, a sales woman from La Redoute from a properly bourgeoise woman from Neuilly.

Obviously he exagerrates a bit, but the underlying point was true, and this to me is a good thing. Everyone should have access to the same expression of common aesthetic sensibilities. Not just those who have far too much money and subsequently create their markers, to which you allude (and incidentally create counter markers in the underclass, as a reaction).

Not to say everyone should conform to a proper dress code, but there's a difference, you know, between differentiation of modes of dress informed by great inequality (against which we should always be striving) and those informed by simple attention-seeking. Note take that there will always be somewhat less than serious people who will wear school-boy knickers with their business suits or something similar, so as to make a certain impression, often bourne of an over-excessive consciousness of self.

Anyhow, since the object of my comment is a German Green, I rather doubt the sneakers were a statement of class consciousness.

Fai de bèn a Bertrand, te lou rendra en cagant