A young person’s careful outfit may be armor for an unfamiliar room.

What can look like vanity is often preparation for a room whose rules are not yet known. When everything else about an occasion is uncertain, the one thing that can be settled in advance is what you are wearing, so it gets an amount of attention that seems out of proportion from outside. The care is armour rather than display. It is a way of arriving with something under control.

Read effort generously when you see it, especially in someone young or new. Say something warm about it early, before they have had time to decide the room is against them.