There really doesn't need to be some grand explanation or "justification" outside of Cap just choosing to wear the suit? Like dog, superheroes aren't contractually obligated to wear a certain or most recent suit? Tf.
Like
dog, I was responding to this...
Something I just noticed: New Stealth Suit has a SHIELD emblem on right deltoid. Not sure that was there in the movie, but even so - SHIELD was finished by this point in the MCU.
But since you're bringing it up, yes effective fictional storytelling does tend to involve an array of deliberate narrative tools and actual reasons for choices made both in the plot and in the visuals, especially when stringing together a continuous, connected story across dozens of feature length films. And its pretty lazy when those actual reasons are just fan service. Fan service with tenuous narrative backing. But wouldn't you know it that's probably about 90% of Endgame to varying degrees. Its not that deep. And I enjoyed it just fine.
But... really in this particular fan-servicey circumstance there really is the fact that narratively and logically there is no good reason that Steve would have any positive connotations associated with the shield suit- considering what it ultimately came to represent by the end of TWS, much less that he apparently kept it lovingly tucked away in a footlocker through multiple moves (after having necessarily retrieved it from whatever dumpster it got tossed into after escaping from the Triskelion).
Yet as the transition to IW to EG happens, Steve's former suit is in tatters from nomading. He needs something else to wear to battle. Why have him wear one of the 20 clean pairs of his most recent suit design that would reasonably still be scattered all over Avengers HQ... when Cap fans can be delighted to see a callback to that slick navy blue suit again that is just
so cool. Yeah, that's really why its there.
Its not actually reasonable for there to be no "grand explanation" in this case because one, the Stealth suit should implicitly no longer exist or two, just choosing to wear it like its laundry day and nothing else is clean ignores an entire movie worth of manipulative baggage associated with it. Its tenuous at first glance and makes even less sense the deeper you go. The only way they decided the could have their cake and eat it too was to lightly justify needing a change in uniform, having it be one that fans really like independently of its in-universe context, and getting it over with so fast and early that no one really recalls what or why anyway. If it had been a clean Civil War suit, or even Ultron, or Coulson Cap (I mean, they played that card later anyway), none of those would really raise an eyebrow for existing somewhere in storage or being worn again for old times sake. The Strike Suit is pretty much the only one that stretches credulity in a big way. But who cares, they stomped that ill fitting puzzle piece in there and went on with their day, and we're left with shrugging and going "well, I guess..."