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I think there's something rather peculiar about wearing deliberately *more* revealing clothes to make others comfortable?

I'm trying to put my finger on why and can't quite articulate it, but there's another factor in 'modesty' which you haven't picked up on here explicitly: privacy. I have fairly conservative standards in teaching clothes, for instance (at least in terms of coverage; these days I'm pretty casual in register). People have asked me why: some of it is practicality (I can swing over a desk in a long skirt more easily than an above-the-knee one), but a lot of it is *privacy*. Those are my legs, they're not for students. That mole on my upper cleavage is mine. My friends get to see it. Random people at the beach get to see it, if i feel like it. But students don't.

I think that's where 'dressing more covered-up than the norm', even if it draws attention, isn't necessarily ostentation. There's a factor of privacy in there, which isn't foremost about other people's reactions.