There is a saying that when a child shows little emotion they are called wooden faced, but when an adult shows little emotion they are called composed. This is just the nature of how the different stages of life are known from the outside by third parties. Of course, when it comes to such things as a person’s wardrobe, there actually are some differences which manifest themselves with age. But they can also be mistaken for other things, depending on some fairly subtle factors in life. One of these significant differences is the difference between having your wardrobe choices be restrained, and having them just be drab. Often in life, the differences are subtle enough that to an eye which is not trained to recognize the differences, there is very little distinction. Restraint and drabness both manifest themselves as being darker, dulled down a bit, and not beingas flashy and noticeable as their more showy and flambouyant counterparts.
Restraint comes out of a desire to keep the full power that one is capable of manifesting hidden from the view of the general public. While any fool can simply go bandying about, showing off every bit of their power for the entire world to see, it takes a person with a good deal more subtlety and maturity to use only the level of ability which is necessary to get the current task accomplished. After all, to do anything beyond what is necessary has to walk a fine line between being a little bit showy and being downright wasteful.
Drabness, on the other hand, is represented by a general lack of concern. While the restrained person’s outfits are generally going to be crisp, neat and clean (and quite possibly new), the drab person often cares only to maintain the most basic levels of cleanliness with regard to they outfits that they wear. While drabness may involve the same color palette as restraint does, the edges of the clothes themselves are often frayed, and the creases are often either not present, or have wandered and sometimes even downright mutated into totally inappropriate wrinkles.