Dressing the Man or Dressing Like Him?

As you may have guessed (from this, this, and this), I wear a tie most days, regardless of occasion. Now, some people might ask, as one friend recently did, "Why do you want to dress like the man?" ("the man" being used here in the 1969 sense of the term). Why not, the logic might go, just wear "whatever" during the day and put on something special when going out? Since I think this is a fair question, I thought I'd address it here.

For me, "the man" shouldn't be the only one who gets to dress respectably on a daily basis. If we avoid wearing something simply because "the man" wears it (a development he may even welcome), he is just as instrumental in determining our attire as he would be if we flocked to wearing it in imitation.

Furthermore, our age of any-garment-goes makes our decision to dress especially independent. Far from "dressing like the man," wearing a tie and so on every day in the current climate, where it's not required (or even preferred), demonstrates agency; we dress because we want to.

In contrast, when we just wear "whatever" most of the time, putting on "something special" for swanky social functions, we indicate that, on certain occasions, we don't wear what we really want but allow others (usually "the man") to dictate an apparel we wouldn't normally don.

Or so it seems to me. What do other people think?