At what point did people start caring about the visual appeal of their garments beyond their utility?
This question might be better in /r/AskAnthropology. "Fashion" goes back further than civilizations. Jewelry, dying of textiles, and other ornamentation have pre-historic roots. Plenty of jewelry items from the Bronze Age exist, for example the Badari tribe in Egypt using painted shells, bone, and stones. Once metal smithing is understood jewelry is easy to find. Evidence for fabric dying goes back to the Neolithic period in Anatolia.