As it is, I believe it doesn’t makes sense for the Cultural Armors to be Rare.
They’re expensive items, and a worthy goal for people to be grinding/farming towards. But if that’s the case, they should at least have end-game (exotic) level stats at least.
If not, then people will only but it for their look. In which case it would be much simpler to make the cultural armors just skins that you can apply to other armors, just like the heritage stuff.
I don’t mind how expensive they are at all. But if they’re going to be so expensive, their stats should reflect it too.