90% of the time, I wear a bathrobe over a white t-shirt and blue jeans - including when I'm in the front or back yard. If going out into public, I drop the bathrobe and toss a button-up over the white tee. I can go from my "work attire" to my "publicly-presentable attire" and be in the car pulling out of the driveway in less than 5 minutes.
When people see me, they don't notice my clothes - at least not at first. Their eyes are drawn first to my dark-brown wild bushy beard, next to my shoulder-length silky hair, third to my handle-bar mustache, and fourth to my 6` 2" height. My non-descript shoes are pretty much the last thing they see.
I am trying to find a decent belt, though - every belt I get, "genuine leather" or not, seems to break rather easily. It seems by "genuine leather", they mean they put a paper-thin layer of leather over something that amounts to cardboard.
It'd definitely true that you pay for quality, but is also absolutely true that you pay for marketing, as well as the "privilege" of being suckered into tiered pricing of "luxury" goods. With companies like Nike with marketing budgets that high, you know at least $30-50 of the shoe is sports licensing fees and advertising costs.
Those brand-less companies you mentioned are more aligned to my interests - if their quality is higher than what I can buy locally or on Amazon.com. Uni-Qlo's online store's belt selection seems like the same poor-quality belts I already have.