As a man I won’t make even a half hearted attempt at trying to answer how, what or why a woman might dress the way she does.
I did want to comment on 2 points that were raised.
. The rules, the dos and don’t are repeatedly stressed, but the beauty of it is not. Put another way, I think the person was saying, if someone understands what it means to be a bas yisroel, a bas melech, proper dress wouldn’t be an issue. I think there is great merit to this line of reasoning. It reminds me very much of the Slabodka approach to mussar, “gadlus ha’adam. One of the first things written about Rav Ezrachi Shlita (one of todays leading “slabodka” talmidim) is how he carries himself and how he presents himself including his apperance. If the gadlus ha’adam approach could somehow be incorporated into chinuch habanos generally and tznius specifically we may not be having this discussion.
.This sentence, I think, is extremely important. “What inspires me and makes the biggest impression on me is when people tell me what the outside world thinks of you when they see you dressed tzniusly. How special they think you are…”. This is an affirmation (not that he needs it) of what the sefer hachinuch writes in mitzvah tes zayin, “adam nifal kifi peulaso”. In short you keep positively reinforcing an idea and a person will strive to that praise. The chinuch turns the saying “confidence breeds success” on its head. He seems to be saying “success breeds confidence”. Its difficult to summarize a long chinuch, its worthwhile to see what he says in his own words. The sentence I quoted affirms this idea. The greatest inspiration to be a tzanua she wrote, is hearing how speacial other people thought she was. And as the chinuch himself writes “mitoch chelo lishma, bah lishma”. (Never did I ever think I would quote a chinuch explaining the lav not to break bones of the korban pesach in the same sentence as tznius).
A gmar chasima tova to all.