Yes, agreed. It still does not explain the practice in a way that makes sense to me. There are so many and much better ways to signal disposable wealth. To me it immediately signals "more money than sense".
I don't like branding either. For normal cotton wear, it's largely Uniqlo peppered with more unique pieces from minimally branded designers. For sportswear I tend to purchase from Lululemon because it's high quality and minimally branded. However, I understand it would be much cheaper to buy a bunch of discount Nike, Adias, or New Balance clothing. So I don't necessarily associate overt branding with disposable wealth per-se and I would say it depends on the brand and the context the clothing is being worn (but maybe that's only because of my understanding of brand differences). I would assume someone wearing all Lululemon to be more wealthy than someone wearing all Adidas even though it's less branding.
That said, certain designer brands serve only to be a status symbol like Gucci, LV, Supreme, Kenzo, Bathing Ape, Off-White, Balenziaga..the list goes on. Hell, at least if someone is driving a Mercedes or BMW they're getting a well built car, there's almost no excuse to pay more than $50 for a T-shirt just because it's from Fendi or Maison Kitsune.
As we pointed out in other comments, sneakers are an exception and it's almost impossible to find decent sneakers without branding and this probably has to do with the economies of scale.
There is an amount of money one could have that no amount of sense could make up for.
In reality flagrant wealth is often tied to poor financial decisions that have lead to a lack of actual wealth.
These are not mutually-exclusive options.
Louis Vuitton, on the other hand, famously has its logo all over its products [2]. But even there you kind of have to know what you're looking for. It doesn't jump out at you the way a Nike logo does.
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[1] https://us.loropiana.com/en/p/man/polo-and-t-shirts/soft-t-s...
[2] https://us.louisvuitton.com/eng-us/products/monogram-gradien...
I know my attitude puts some people off, and I really do understand why, but it's not out of class snobbery, it's that I find advertising so visually repulsive.
When I lived in New York there were so many options it was hard to choose, but I'd check out used clothing boutiques for fun things.
Equivalent items do generally look better, to me at least, compared to the US
https://www2.hm.com/en_us/men/products/pants.html
Equivalent prices, too.
For example, compare the "cargo joggers" Finland https://www2.hm.com/fi_fi/productpage.1002227020.html
to the equivalent item from the US store https://www2.hm.com/en_us/productpage.1002227011.html
To me the one available from the Finnish store has a better cut and seems to be made of a thicker material.