[Habibi Jones]

Thing is we have a real problem right now of people not using expensive or good gear, this would only make it worse. I'm sure there is a solution to make things more interesting without breaking the system more, but I'm not sure what it is, none of the suggestions so far are quite right to me though, most of them I fear would lead either to overuse of leather, or compound existing problems with getting people to wear decent armour (especially in PvP).

Solution: Create tailoring clothing which requires 60 armor to equip. Give the clothes some good bonus and make them expensive/hard to craft.
Make some meditation clothing...
Make some stealth clothing...
Make some magic resist clothing...
Etc, etc.

The key is to make these clothes powerful and coveted, this makes them expensive and gives much more incentive to wear good armor as well as group up and down PK's who are wearing expensive mage clothes.