Deciding what to wear is one of the ways in which people try to pin down meaning, and control both presentations and interpretations of selfhood. This paper explores this negotiation of meaning in the context of the clothing practices of the ethnographer, and the judgements that are made by people in the field based on the former’s sartorial expressions. This brings to light the dialectic process of reification of identity that exists on both sides. The paper further argues that in order to understand how clothing relates to, or creates social identity, one needs to know how clothed bodies are located in a particular setting. Such an approach necessarily includes an interrogation of the clothing practices of the ethnographer.