Guild Wars 2

Town clothing is very limited. It is silly to give someone a costume they can only wear in town, because “In-Town” is such a tiny part of the game. Unless people are standing around waiting for a party, doing crafting, or making bank deposits, they won’t even be in town. And when they ARE in town, doing the aforementioned activities, the last thing they’ll care about is putting on a silly outfit.
As it is, the town clothing slots are a waste of space. In Guild Wars 1, characters had a costume slot so that they could wear their holiday outfits over their regular armor—while still recieving the armor benefits. I think a similar slot should be implimented for Guild Wars 2—let us wear our town clothing all the time in PvE.
In my own personal experience, I puchased a pair of glasses for my character. The glasses were meant to be a defining part of his appearance, but they have been a huge dissapointment, since I can’t wear them regularly.

You can wear costumes outside of towns, but you can not take damage while in costume (if you do take damage you revert back to your Armour)

None the less though, I do agree with your idea to implement town clothes outside of towns permanently as long as their was a a toggle to switch between costume skills and combat skills. [maybe a check box in the costume panel to activate the costume skills and deactivate them?]