Jonathan Franzen's "The Corrections" - Loaded Details

I like how Franzen rarely merely describes a character's appearance, but instead tells us something about the character's interior life by means of their appearance. For example, here's how Franzen describes his character Chip Lambert, while fantasizing about a woman who passes him at the airport:

"... if the girl had noticed him, she might have thought he was a little too old for the leather he was wearing."

 From this fragment of a sentence, we learn that Chip is wearing leather, that he's older, and that he's insecure about outgrowing his wardrobe—much more interesting than something like "Chip was in his mid thirties and wore leather." Plus, framing the detail in the girl's hypothetical judgment of Chip is endearing to those of us who can't help but to regularly imagine what strangers think about our appearance.

(The judgment about the age appropriateness of Chip's attire could be the narrator's judgment, but other elements in the passage makes it seem like the insecurity belongs to Chip.