Just over the electronic transom: a press release for a recent examination of adornment & communication in India--Pravina Shukla's The Grace of Four Moons.  Hindu and Muslim dress are central to the work.  

There's a lot of good stuff here, but this in particular stands out:

[The notion of dress as communication is] also consistent with an important concept within Hinduism called Darshan, a Sanskrit word which means "vision."

"The premise of Hinduism is you look at the god and the god looks back at you," Shukla said. "You ask for the god's protection by looking at the god's face. The god gives you a blessing by looking back at you. Most of the Hindu statues have very big, prominent eyes -- the eyes are painted at the very end when you're making a statue."

It provides a precedent for nonverbal communication in India and shapes its people's orientation to the visual, she said.

A real McLuhan moment!