Thoughts on Clothing and Tailoring

Tailored Clothing Need Matching Mechanics

I'm not entirely sure how to word this, but I don't believe that the fabrics do what we generally believe that they do. For example, one would think that wool would be a product you would wear in the winter to avoid getting cold. However I still notice myself getting very cold in the winter months, and I'm hesitant to say that the Dyna-wool is good for extreme cold environments. An entire hand tailored wool lined bushurka greatcoat vs a store bought parka. Who will win?

Most importantly I think that tailored leather wear should have provide as much armor as the leather wear you can buy off of the shelves. If someone comes to my character asking for a bad ass leather duster to wear while riding, you'd expect it to be of some use if you eat pavement. Nope. The leather duster that you can purchase at the retail location will actually provide armor bonuses in case of a wreck. My badass one? Not so much.

I don't think it would be such a stretch to allow tailored leather armor to float around the Du-Wear bracket for protection.

Also, Egyptian Cotton and Diamondweave need to give Green + signs to the things that off the rack clothing gives. It's very hard for me to live to the theme of personalization and such when I have to stop wearing Egyptian Cotton in exchange for lesser Pinstripe silk product because funny colors activate the monkey part in my brain, and it is weird trying to weigh the green + signs to wanting to have a slightly different short desc. Also, my honest advice to clients wanting the best shouldn't be to buy off the rack gear because I literally cannot compete with what a silk shirt can do.

Custom patch jobs should not be noticeable

And by custom patch job I mean that if a tailor matches both the fabric type and the exact color of the clothing piece, a repair job should not be noticeable to those looking at the person in general, or at least not noticeable if the skill checks are in their favor.

Clothing Should Deteriorate and Require Patching

I think it would be interesting if clothing could deteriorate over time, depending on how you treat your clothing. Slowly, but eventually, clothing starts looking a little worn out, then threads start showing as the clothing deteriorates. A tailor could <> these small imperfections, but if you don't notice them in time, suddenly you could hear a rip and your clothing has a slit that requires an actual patch job.

Dry Cleaning and Stains

I don't think we should be able to just casually wash blood out of our clothing. Maybe require going to a tailor. Also certain places (sewers) should permanently 'stain' clothing, requiring appropriate tailoring skills to get out.

An Underlayer Flag Would Be Nice

What I mean is a flag that would allow a piece of clothing to be worn under clothing it normally wouldn't fit over. So we can have our wool long johns to keep warm in the winter.

Tailored clothing should offer some level of environmental protection as you say, but I think it would have to be done on a keyword system and not by material. You use the example of wool, but believe it or not, wool suits are actually the best suits you can wear in hot weather. It's a very versatile fabric.

Patching being noticeable: Yes, agreed completely. If a tailor wants to patch clothing with cheap garbage, make it show. If it's professional restoration work, you can't tell the difference. Matching materials as the check along with passing a sufficient skill check should suffice, as you said.

Clothing deterioration would depend on the patching being seamless. No seamless patches? Hard pass. Seamless patches? Sounds great! I do like the dry cleaning idea. The thought that you could wash blood out of clothing has never sat right with me. It is far and away too easy to get rid of evidence of a crime in SD, this would be an improvement in that regard.

As for layering, I think it's entirely dependent on the name of the item. Layering exists, so maybe there just needs to be some keywords added to the existing system.

I like the overall idea, and think it has merit. I wish there was more work for tailors beyond grinding endless repetitious @messages ad nauseam. In fact, if there is ever an update to the clothing system, my suggestion would be to simply do away with a number of the messages entirely. A generic don/doff message is -fine-. What's not fine is trying to come up with 40 variations of tying shoe laces.