I trust my friends, but just as there can be treachery in a kiss, so too there can be betrayal in an honourable mien. It has repeatedly proved too much to ask of persons of quality that they always remain so in those societies, which are all the societies there are, in which people will be presented with conflicting claims. … I see no reason to trust trust just as trust. And so, I see no reason to trust its markers. Given the syntactical and sartorial corollaries of aristocracies, I see no reason to trust someone who speaks and dresses too well; and given the sartorial corollaries of the new socialist person, I see no reason to trust one who dresses with too ostentatious a drabness either.

XREF: Connects to skepticism about surface markers of trustworthiness — resonates with ideas about signaling theory and the unreliability of social performance.

Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking…, loc. 1532