well yeah obviously there’s only meaning after a group gives it meaning. nobody’s going to say that a white shirt itself is chashuv. and all the other gedolim would be every single rosh yeshiva or moised that makes its bochurim wear white shirts, because by doing so they’re subscribing to this idea. (i’m not saying that anyone who didn’t isnt a gadol) so this means that every single rosh yeshiva out there be it sefardi litvish or chassidish (outside of yu chofetz chaim and mizrachi places, and even by cc they mandate wearing a hat, and a lot of yu bochurim do wear hats as well). and when these are the people that put meaning into a black hat, our rabbonim and our gedolim, we can absolutely trust that its justified.
this makes the case that there should be meaning associated with yeshivish clothing, because again, it gives a person what to identify with and standards to uphold for himself. i know people first hand that were able to get out of certain situations because of the white shirt and black pants. its an expression of how religious a person is.
“Whatever motivations Rav Miller had for the essay, is not my concern. I trust him, that he knew what he was doing.” it should be! because he wrote for it a very obvious reason, he wrote it very clearly so people should understand that levush is not meaningless. that’s exactly the point of his essay. that people should feel the chashivus of when they walk around dressed like a ben Torah and understand who and what they’re identifying with then they do so. it is abundantly clear what he’s trying to accomplish in his essay