Yeah, I probably couldn't have gotten away with this fic during the first flush of fandom because these fanon tropes we've created were really handy for building up people's expectations. So I was definitely playing on "pristine perfect point man Arthur". But I also did it because the film itself uses slight distinctions in costuming to show the difference between reality and dreams (characters are always more dishevelled/less put together in reality) and I carried that over to show the difference between reality and Cobb's dementia here.

"Pristine perfect point man Arthur" is my second least favourite characterisation of Arthur (first would be cold, emotionally repressed Arthur) so whenever I mention his clothes I try to also say they are colourful and/or not perfect just to subvert that trope a little bit.