I assume this was always a thing among the nobility, but like, was there a medieval equivalent of "keeping up" with your neighbors for peasants and regular folk? The way today people judge themselves and each other in relation to material things like their job, their house, their car, how nice their lawn is, etc.
Fabric. Remember, before the industrial revolution, fiber arts were incredibly labor intensive - from fleece to yarn to cloth, everything was done by hand. The middle ages took to what are to modern eyes quite extreme flourishes in their clothing - often a kind of "conspicuous consumption". Using more fabric than was absolutely necessary was a show of wealth.
Some early examples include the practice of "rooking" - cutting sleeves too long and scrunching them up on the lower arm. On this Anglo-saxon woman you can see all of the wrinkling on her forearms. (The pendant and maunch sleeves tend to not filter down to the lower classes as much, due to their impracticality)
You also see the development of the tailed hood, or "liripipe" - early hoods had either a smooth back or a small peak, but that peak soon developed into a long, narrow "tail." That tail could be so long that it needed to be tucked into one's belt or wrapped around the body to prevent it from dragging on the ground.
Here, you can see a liripipe knotted up to keep it out of the way. You can also see men & women with "tippets" - narrow strips of cloth dangling from their sleeves that also served as a piece of conspicuous consumption
Liripipe hijinks
Another outlet for expressing status would be footwear - again, what started as a slight variant (a pointed toe vs. a rounded toe) grew to extremes. This style of show became known as a poulaine or kracow, and is attributed to developing initially in Poland. With poulaines, the toe extends FAR beyond the wearer's foot.
Here are some extant poulaines
Here is a picture of servers wearing poulaines
