Uniforms mostly signal identity only within their proper setting

Evidence

Many other uniforms currently in use are somewhat more tied to location. A hotel doorman, for example, is only unmistakably a hotel doorman when he is standing in front of a hotel door. A nurse (minus her cap) outside the hospital might be taken for a beautician, a waitress, a lab technician, or any one of a variety of “women in white.” — Lyn H. Lofland, World of Strangers_ Order and Action in…, 484