according to the pluribus costume designer the hive is going to start wearing "plain, neutral clothing" and synthetic fibers to differentiate itself from the unjoined people because disturbing sheep to make wool and harvesting silk from mulberry worms is against their programming.
which, would make clothing more significant than the purely functional aspect we saw in season 1.
Like the sets, the costumes show us a civilization that has decided to stop waste, both physical and mental (...) In a hive mind, clothing no longer serves to signal status, culture, or religion. It is reduced to its leanest, meanest function. "I pitched to him that the clothes shouldn’t signify any of that. "
all the obvious questions of, "why wouldn't they just continue to wear the clothing of the individual? wouldn't it be more time consuming to sort, collect, distribute clothing in the body's particular size? there's warehouses, textile factories full of natural fibers spun and ready to be made into clothing, the surplus in big box retailers, thrifts would keep them clothed for a few decades. why wouldn't they just take what is already available and wear that? why neutral clothing?"
the hive "wastes" bountiful energy in the effort to please the unjoined survivors and to rescue them from imminent death. creating a uniform seems...like energy intensive work for an organism that's already portioning out caloric intake?
to further differentiate themselves from the unjoined, amidst efforts to assimilate the survivors, make them all the most comfortable as they work around the clock to make good on their biological imperative, would this not signal to the survivors the hive's status, culture, or, to employ broadest definition of the word, its religion, that the survivors are excluded from?
is this their next offensive?