Fashion Trends and Social Signals

It's funny how different fashion trends can be used as social signals. I just read a fashion article that talked about how the trend of the bare male ankle seemed to be going away for this fashion season. Honestly, it's been a long time since I kept up with fashion trends. I remember the bare ankle becoming a thing during the 1980s (when I was in high school and college) but I was unaware of its ebb and flow since then. I do definitely recall how my parents absolutely hated the bare ankle trend. For their generation, wearing shoes without socks signaled that you were poor, that you couldn't afford socks. I got many lectures about not making the family look bad because I was keeping up with the trend of not wearing socks with my casual shoes. My parents also did not understand the trend of ripped jeans or faded jeans. For their generation, faded or ripped jeans signaled poverty. My mom actually felt sorry for the kids who wore ripped jeans to school until I explained that it was a fashion choice. What once was a sign of poverty became a sign of cutting-edge fashion sense. At this moment we seem to be moving from bare ankles back to socks, so have we decided it's time to spend more money on the clothing budget to differentiate the fashionable from the broke?