If you go back to earlier times images were important and not to mess about with. Until the late mediaeval period (and even later in some parts of England) images in stained glass were the chief way of telling bible stories. Certain configurations of images had particular meanings and reading these windows was second nature to people of the time.

Most of the meanings have been lost over the intervening centuries so modern glass (from the 17th century onwards) lacks the narrative found in the earlier works. By the time you get to Victorian glass it is so removed from it's roots that it has become a literal representation. There are still faint echoes of earlier stories but these are now so far out of context as to be meaningless, they are icons that have been reused because they are pretty rather than for the message.

In some ways the fashion revivals you refer to are like this. The styles draw on earlier fashions but in the interval new materials and technologies have arrived and these alter the way the earlier fashion is implemented. At each incarnation the designer edits the style and in doing so drifts ever further from source. Sometimes this happens rapidly, sometimes it is imperceptible and only by looking back is it clear that there has been drift at all.

Everyone believes in some golden age of clothing that informs the way they see clothes. In most cases this is based on their early environment, in other cases it comes from earlier images or books, in all cases the grounding is equally valid. The danger comes when style isn't informed but is rather constrained by those images. That style become ever more detached from the mainstream of fashion until it is effectively a museum pieces. This has a form of purity provided the wearers can accept that what they are wearing is costume and don't decry others for not following their lead. For everyone else the world has moved on.