"Not to rain on your meme parade" but James Cameron had a two tier excuse.
1. (Let's) face it. Cameron was probably saving money on costume and set design costs every which way he could. Being frugal while getting as much out of the budget as possible in the 1980s, without knowing fans would accept an AVP 1&2 set on modern earth in future installments.
2. James Cameron said "in the future he can still see a business suit still being a business suit 100s of years from now". ALIENS had realism and he wanted people to associate suits as bad, untrustworthy people who abuse power.
Burke starts off in a suit during board meeting and Ripley introductions. I guess he "dressed down" into blue collar worker gear to fit in with colony workers. The colonists also sporting vests and lumber-jackets in deleted colony scenes. The white collar (suit), blue collar (lumberjacks) suggesting "lower class" = expendable for impregnation.
