I feel like this is actually that people don't get to decide if others will perceive signals.

> They (or their clothes as per the example) sends signals in either case.

Unless you're Sherlock Holmes, or know the person and their wardrobe intimately, you literally cannot discern anything of value from a one-time viewing of them.

Reddit and quora are littered with stories about car salesmen misreading what they thought were signals, and missing out on big sales. The whole Julia Roberts trope resonates exactly because it happens in real life.

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and sometimes, as George Carlin pointed out, it's a big fat brown dick.