I agree! Yours is a much better sentence. Learning to read involves context; it isn’t all rote.
I don’t know what to make of that (silhouette of clothes), either. Maybe a collection, even a spectrum or a repertoire? On a specific occasion, an ensemble. A melange. But unless you’re referring to a street mime in black spandex head to toe, “silhouette” is not the best choice of word.
Agreed, that’s a p+ss poor sentence. Seems written to force the use of those three uncommon words. Probably conjured up by some unqualified TA that got the assignment to make sentences from a list of target words, and the test creator was too lazy to check it.
This very sentence was a topic of heated discussion on Reddit the last couple of days, and some in the fashion business defended the use of “silhouette” as a fashion industry term and thus appropriate, while most didn’t like the choice of “silhouette” but were mainly arguing about the verb “were” vs. “was” in the sentence: was it the silhouette that was extraordinary but gauche, or the clothes that were extraordinary but gauche?
I agree that “silhouette” is strange in the example sentence. It normally refers to an black on white picture showing the overall shape of something, usually a person — sort of a negative backlit shadow.
But Wikipedia adds (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silhouette):
“Because a silhouette emphasizes the outline, the word has also been
used in fields such as fashion, fitness, and concept art to describe
the shape of a person’s body or the shape created by wearing clothing
of a particular style or period.”
I guess not knowing this shows that my STEM orientation has resulted in my becoming très gauche.