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In recent research, my Harvard Business School colleagues Silvia Bellezza and Anat Keinan and I found that under certain conditions, nonconforming behaviors, such as not following the expected dress code or the appropriate professional conduct in a given context, can signal higher status. In our research, for example, shop assistants working in boutiques selling luxury brands in Milan assigned greater status to the woman wearing gym clothes and a jean jacket rather than to the woman properly dressed. In another study, students assigned higher status to a 45-year-old professor working at a top-tier university when he was described as wearing a t-shirt and had a beard than to a clean-shaven one wearing a tie. When the deviant behavior appears to be deliberate, it can lead to higher status inferences rather than lower ones.

Why is this the case? Nonconformity often has a social cost, so people assume people breaking the rules enjoy a powerful enough position that they are not concerned about the costs. So, the keynote speaker at a well-known event who is clearly wearing mis-matched socks, the senior executive who shows up at work in his or her jeans, or even the person who randomly walks up to strangers in restaurants and eats food off their plate may be judged by others as having greater status than if they were to conform to the norms of appropriate conduct. Though different, in all these cases the individuals are breaking accepted social rules. And, by doing so deliberately, they are likely to gain some status points in the eyes of others.

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– http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=gaining-status-with-red-sneakers