Race specific fashion

[Celef]

Race-locked is about as retarded as gender-locked, imho.

Agreed, considering the place that glamour has in this game (jeez, we even have a contest on it !) i think refusing to open all the glamours to everyone is like fireing a bullet in the game's foot
(do you even use this expression in english ?)

[Enkidoh]

They don't really make much sense in first place though.. being the fact that the races all live in mixed raced areas for many decades & we never/rarely see any of those races wearing this attire outside of players. If anything all Racial gear should be unlocked.

There is a reason for that though - most of the npcs in the game were originally also in version 1.0 where as the starting racial armour is only an ARR addition, and so most of those npcs either simply retained whatever outfit appearance they had in 1.0 in ARR, or were given an entirely unique outfit for them (which usually end up on the Mogstation for players anyway). Players didn't start with racial armour in 1.0, they instead started 1.0 with a specific non-racial outfit depending on what class they started as (GLAs started with a weathered tabard, trousers and shoes for instance), so this was a new addition (the 'hempen' gear is from 1.0, that was old 'smallclothes' that existed in a specific gear slot in 1.0 which was abolished for ARR so is basically an entirelly new set technically anyway.

The old FFXIII event however did clarify lore-wise at least that the starting armour is each race's 'traditional costume' (the miqo'te reporter stated she gave Lightning a "traditional outfit of the miqo'te" as a parting gift, which is the miqo'te starting armour players can gain for her in Lightning Returns ~ FFXIII, so that settles that particular point though. Starting armour is the traditional attire of each race, and because of that, I do not see SE changing this.

[Selvokaz]

to be fair, we now know the original cultural attire for the two races of Au'Ra are very much taken from the Far Eastern real world equivalent of Japan and Middle East respectively. So i'm super curious as to why the male and female members of that race who become adventurers change their fashion so drastically. Yes I know the WoL isn't from any of the Azim Steppe tribes but those were the original Xae tribes homeland and culturally just because the parents of the WoL likely left those lands and culture behind them doesn't mean they'd start dressing in rags and call it "our races clothes."

[Celef]

Starting armour is the traditional attire of each race, and because of that, I do not see SE changing this.

But, again, that makes no sense. We play a adventurer, a traveler, am'I the only one on this planet wanting to buy and were traditionnal clothes when I travel ? To me it's a way to discover a culture, like the food I tend to eat (never gonna to a Mc do on Japan or Maroco or China for instance, I'd prefer local recipies)
It's only logic that our character, considering all the people he/she mates might like an outfit from anonther race and start wearing one and the same goes for the Hemphen sets.

Yes I know the WoL isn't from any of the Azim Steppe tribes"

Who knows ? the Ao'ra WoL might as well be from one of this tribes, wanting to see other places in the world or being a baby merchand or something like that