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I agree with everything except your first paragraph. I've never had trouble finding perfectly normal clothing that allows me to sidestep fashion and merely look good. Neither have I noticed any particular social opprobrium for doing so, though I'm hardly at a maximal status (and my social circle is likely atypical), so who knows.
My impression is that it's always been possible (for men at least) to take the low-risk option and dress "conservatively".
One doesn't necessarily "sidestep fashion" by dressing conservatively. Desired lapel and tie widths change over the years. Do you care if your clothes have stains or holes? That signals something about your fashion sense.
Figuring out which clothes appeal to the shifting tastes of various audiences in various social settings is not easy for someone who suffers from schizophrenia, autism, trisomy 21, severe depression, or other affliction that impairs one's will or ability to conform to mercurial social trends.
Even someone who buys desirable brands can be inept at coordinating garments and selecting an appropriate cut. Like many other social behaviors, the clothes we wear send messages about our social roles, aspirations, and neurological health.
It's been my experience that fashion revivals leave a sort of "residue" of retro coolness that doesn't disappear entirely. My only suit probably dates back to the seventies (I wasn't born until the early eighties), but wearing it gives me occasional points for being "retro" or something to that effect. Since it doesn't stand out glaringly it doesn't attract too much attention (I think there is something to being conservative), and since I'm totally out of phase either with cutting edge fashion or any revival cycles, I don't appear to be behind the curve and struggling to keep up with fashion. I just look like an outlier that could fit into some fashion cycle associated with some subculture somewhere, or who has a strong self-identity (plus in complements my body shape relatively well, so I don't look absurd that way). But then, I only weakly interact with most social groups, and my strongest social ties are with fashion challenged subcultures anyway. In short, being way out of phase in fashion cycles (which gives one a fairly large margin of error) is relatively safe compared to being just slightly behind a fashion cycle.
Expensive enough clothing comes with in-store fashion coordinators, though you can ignore them once you get home of course.
I agree with both of those sentences, but I think the conjunction is odd.
There is fashion in lapel widths, but that fashion is, I think, for people who have to wear jackets, for whom jackets are thus not conservative. For such people, there are conservative (ie, low-risk) widths. For people who don't have to wear jackets, lapels may matter, but they'll matter in a very different way.
For settings where a wide range of clothes are allowed, there are options that are low-risk and slow-changing. These usually involve dressing up a little, but not too much. I think people trying to avoid fashion underestimate the risk, ie, the residual details that matter. Also, there's some other mistake they make...maybe overdressing out of confusion of different meanings of conservative?
People can become so used to certain styles and colors that they don't even classify certain sartorial habits as fashion. They don't notice the cultural currents that surround them anymore than a fish notices that it's wet. To them, the word fashion is associated with only the most loud and heavily marketed forms of fashion.
It's similar to how people associate the word diet with slimming diets. In truth, as long as we are eating, we have a diet. And as long as we dress ourselves, we are making fashion decisions.
Conservative garb is not necessarily timeless. Some subcultural or countercultural fashions manage to loosen their connection to the year in which they were born. If you showed me a picture of a man in a suit taken in 1978, I could probably guess that it was from the late seventies by using the color palette and fit as clues. I would have a harder time identifying the year in which a photo of a skinhead was taken.
3-piece suits from 1917 were not made in the same styles as the ones that you can find in the store today, but Converse All-Stars, though designed in 1917, are still widely available. I can also go to a shoe store and buy a new pair of Adidas Superstars that were designed in 1969 or Adidas Sambas designed in 1950.
I like timeless fashion and just bought a pair of Adidas Superstars.
Which conjunction do you find odd? Is it the "and" between lapel and tie?