Well, the "clotheshorse"="gay" stereotype certainly is a durable one, one that my wife tends to subscribe to, and one is left to wonder how it arose. I am inclined to think it is of quite recent vintage. Certainly, if one looks at how men of wealth adorned themselves in the middle ages, right through the early modern period (e.g., cavaliers in their "gay" [before the word took on its present connotation] apparel), 18th century fops, early 19th century dandies, etc., to say nothing of military uniforms in the early to mid 19th century, indubitably "manly" men took great pains about their appearance, and in many respects this continued down through the 1930s and into the 1940s.
I can't help wondering if a lot of popular cinema wasn't responsible for this notion: The buckskin-clad frontiersman is wiser and more virile than the foppish British officer who leads his redcoats into the Indian ambush. The cowboy is much more virile and competent than the dandified dude and tinhorn gambler. (Curious, given that a number of the deadliest gunfighters of the frontier--Wild Bill, Dallas Stoudenmire, Long Jim Courtwright, just to name a few--were very considerable dandies.) The heroic American G.I is in his mud-stained and torn battle fatigues while the cruel Nazi officer is always impeccably uniformed, and so it goes.... The message is that the "real" man, the "he-man" is something of a grub while the well-turned out man is innately less competent and effete, and hence more likely to be out-and-out gay.
Okay, apologies for the stereotyping here: I realize that a goodly number of gays, especially certain subsets of the gay culture, are tough as hell and often hyper-masculine. However, the mindset that equates "well dressed" and "homosexual" no doubt also stereotypes gay men as all a bunch of preening Nellies. Having spent much of my adult life living and/or working in proximity to large gay male population centers, I never discerned any difference in the way gay men dressed and their straight counterparts, i.e., usually rather poorly!
