I think the OP is American and all he means is dancing with gloves on like in the old skool days. Its worth remembering that in them days people didn’t actually take it all that seriously and have special moves etc, and a lot of fashions came from items that were widely used for other purposes in Britain at the time. White or distinctive coloured gloves were (and still are) used in various industries to protect either hands or the end product against contamination, and by folk whose job it is to direct large vehicles and cranes especially when reversing or loading/unloading.
For instance Altern8 wore masks and PPE against chemicals more for a laugh because they came from a place where people still worked building cars and industry (some still do) and it was common work wear and cheap/easy to get hold of (often such items were left behind in warehouses what were closing down).
Another popular fashion item in the early rave days amongst blokes especially was a fishing hat, particularly in areas of SE England near the River Thames and round here by the North Sea.
Bear in mind that parents weren’t as tolerant/non judgemental as today about drugs, so “going fishing on Sunday” was a good excuse to get out of the house quickly before your elders realised just how fucked you had got at the weekend, also it gave a excuse to be hanging around more secluded areas and provided your group wasn’t overly boisterous and folk didn’t fall in the drink the bobby would leave everyone alone and Dads in particular didn’t think it odd their sons would spend the morning to the evening fishing as they often did that in their youth.
Also the Thames wasn’t particularly clean, nor the North Sea and in England we have this odd practice of catching fish, weighing them and then returning them to the river/sea so it wouldn’t have been seen as odd to return empty handed (whereas those in foreign lands tend to concentrate on edible species and bring what they’ve caught back to their mums/wives after going to such effort, though it probably wasn’t advisable in the 90s for health reasons).
in fact many of us were getting stoned and/or planning various deals, though to be fair some actually did take fishing quite seriously.
