Quote Originally Posted by Calemyr View Post
Would they? While important to the Soul Reapers, their uniforms are not intrinsic to their being. High ranking Soul Reapers often carry accessories or customizations that are not standard, such as Renji's glasses/headband or Korraku's hat or Yamamoto's oversized haori or Kenpachi's tattered one. Nor is the appearance of the Soul Reaper exactly bound to the appearance of their physical body, as seen by the captains' tendency to wear time-appropriate clothing on their gigai. (Also, jokes have been made, at least in the anime, about swapping gigai to freak the newly spiritually blind Ichigo out.)
Exactly - their gigai wear time-appropriate clothing, because their spirit forms can't. Matsumoto even complains about it while shopping (she can't bring the clothes back with her.)

And the accessories etc. are irrelevant, they still wear the shihakusho in spirit form regardless of what extras they adorn it with.

I agree that Rukia's gigai doesn't affect this discussion one way or the other - in fact, that's exactly what I was saying.