Dear Ladies:
An actor or actress—if they are at all good at their craft, and not just good at looking good, so to speak—can dissemble about all sorts of things in front of an audience that knows, absolutely knows, they are lying, and yet we all believe them.
Why is that? Why do we believe when we absolutely know the person in front of us is telling a lie?
To say it is just their clothing and their manner of wearing their clothing would be disingenuous; of course there is skill behind it, and practice at lying, and the words the playwright finds to convince us of the lie.
But it also is important to remember that the clothing does, indeed, serve a part in the play. To look in the way you wish someone to see you is more than half of the battle. If it weren’t, actors and actresses would amble up onto stage garbed in whatever they had put on that morning, and would still be able to convince you that you were watching a duchess, or a peasant, or a king.
Or even a beautiful woman.
Dress for the lie, and the lie will be easier to view as a truth.
The Fashionable Foible