A question i'm hoping N.T.'s can answer

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Dude, I'm with you - stay with your Vans if you like them. You would only be a poser if you carried around a skateboard & didn't know how to skateboard.
This reminds me of an instance when I went out with my sister & her friend. I wore a button-up shirt with a collar. My sister's friend was so embarrassed to be seen with me because I wasn't wearing tight girly clothes like her. She didn't call me a poser or anything, but I just didn't understand why the clothes I wore effected her like that.

I think as long as it's clean and comfortable and presentable, wear what you want. The above happening occurred about 10 years ago. I'm still perfectly happy wearing collared button up shirts

Well, to answer the general question you started with, clothes are regarded differently than other objects because physical appearance is the first thing most people notice about another person. It may not be the thing they care about most, but generally speaking you see someone before you can, for example, hear them. You usually know what clothes they're wearing before you know how their house is decorated, or what car they drive, or what music they like, or what their personality is like. (Before anyone says anything about that--it's not just a "I care what car you drive" thing like for status, it's more "it's important to know what car you drive because that gives me a clue about what you value"--like if a person drives a hybrid car, I know they think it's important to save energy and they probably care about global warming.)

That said, some people care about clothes, some don't. Some have associations with certain clothes and some don't. Some clothes originally had a specific purpose, so people who associate those clothes with that purpose might think it's a bit disingenuous to wear them for a different purpose. And I think most NTs (and I'm guessing a great many people with AS also) know (and I mean intellectually, not necessarily intuitively--I'm NT, but it took me years to internalize this) that their clothes are the first thing other people will notice about them. So people try to wear clothes that will make people see them the way they want to be seen.

Like if I want people to believe I am a serious business person, I wear a suit. If I want people to believe I like to go hiking, I wear jeans and hiking boots. (In my case--and I suspect in most people's cases--both things are true, btw. It's just a question of which side of me I want people to focus on.) So there are probably people who wear Vans because they want to be seen as a skateboarder, and someone who tries to make him/herself seem like something he or she actually isn't is a "poseur."

That's what the guy meant. I don't think you were being a "poseur" (and btw it was rude for him to say so), but he meant that he thought you were trying to make yourself look like a skateboarder because you wanted to be perceived as a skateboarder even though you really aren't. When actually you didn't know that wearing Vans would make some people think you were a skateboarder. (By the way, I wouldn't have known either.)

So in other words, wear your Vans if you like them and anyone who's a jerk to you for it is, well, a jerk. But now you know that some people have an association "Vans = skateboarder" and that some of those people will assume you're trying to make people think you're a skateboarder.

Does that make sense?