Outer ware is a billboard, if you like, for social signaling: rank, status, in-group adherence, and so on.  Wearing a suit to a physics meeting sends the message 'I'm a member of an Out-Group' at an In-Group gathering.  Naturally they are viewed with suspicion and hostility just like all the Pink Baboon experiments.

I'll grant physicists, unlike baboons, won't mob, bite, and drive the intruder away.  

(If there is anybody watching.  :-)

In my experience, if you want to fit in among most physicists it is important to dress in a way that signals that you do not care about your appearance. The ideal would be to be all mind, and not have a body. If you appear vain, you have out-defined yourself from the group. Of course, this becomes a standard that is very hard to acheive for women, as women are defined by being body.

These conclusions are based on swedish physics departments, but might hold for western physics departments in general. Heard there are lots of indian women in physics, so they might have other norms.

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