Animal Crossing Clothes Fill a Style Savvy-shaped Hole

Nintendo and Syn Sophia’s Style Savvy series has always offered a number of different sorts of experiences in one package for players. Part of it involves a fashion simulator. It also allows people to run a shop and serve people’s needs. There’s a creative element, as you can typically design your own sorts of outfits. There are also the contests that test your ability to meet guidelines and coordinate. While there isn’t a Nintendo Switch installment just yet, Animal Crossing: New Horizons is surprisingly stepping up to fill that need, as all of the Animal Crossing clothes-related options and opportunities tackle different topics.

First, there’s the general dressing up. Animal Crossing: New Horizons is great about giving people a wide array of items to choose from. A person can wear nine items at once, though they are limited to certain combinations. For example, you can wear glasses and a doctor’s mask at the same time as custom face paint, but adding a wig would remove the mask. Also, leggings, socks, and tights all fall under the same category and can’t be worn at once. Still, there are a wide variety of items, complete with things like backpacks, bags, and wigs. It’s a massive assortment that, combined with different color options and the promise of new clothing for events, could only cause our closets to expand. It delivers on the Style Savvy dream of “owning all the clothing.”

Animal Crossing: New Horizons also pulls a Style Savvy by both encouraging and making it easy to change clothing. The fashion series would allow people to create and save preset outfits. This happens with Animal Crossing clothes now too. People can craft or earn magic wands from events. Once they own one, they can head to a wardrobe to create designated outfits. Up to eight outfits can be registered total. You designate every part that will be assigned from items in your inventory and not currently part of another outfit. (These can be swapped out later by choosing to change the items.) You then name the outfit, which is also the exclamation you will say when you change in-game. (Be careful, as everyone will see this word or phrase.) After it is set, you can also choose which clothing item represents it to show as the identifying part.

There’s also the ability to get creative. Animal Crossing, as a series, has long allowed players to customize clothing or pictures to decorate themselves and their towns. Animal Crossing: New Horizons is great about giving people a chance to decorate. There are standard and Pro Designs, which aren’t unusual. The former is one basic design, while the latter lets you customize specific sorts of outfits or hats. You can import old Animal Crossing QR codes from New Leaf and bring them forward.

But the real key is how Able Sisters now takes a Style Savvy approach to sharing. Nintendo’s fashion series allowed people to have a central shop and profile. Animal Crossing: New Horizons outfit codes do that with central codes for each uploaded outfit and a general code for each artist, to make searching simpler. (By the way, you can find Siliconera’s Castlevania, Final Fantasy VII Remake, and Persona 5 outfits online!)

Then, there’s Label. One shared experience between Animal Crossing and Style Savvy is the fashion challenge. People are required to dress up according to a certain theme for a reward. Gracie Grace, a fashionista giraffe, was in charge of such tests in past Animal Crossing games. Here, the third Able sister Label appears to see if people are stylish enough. She’ll show up once Able Sisters is established and will ask you to dress according to a certain theme. She’ll give you one piece of clothing and ask you to coordinate it according to a theme like “formal.” You then have to use what’s in your closet and at the Able Sisters’ to come up with a look and report back. Success means earning an exclusive clothing item and one under 3,000 bell item of your choosing from her sister’s store. Again, it helps capture a shared element from the other series. 

It might be a while before Nintendo’s full-time fashion series shows up on the Nintendo Switch. (If, well, it does at all.) But Animal Crossing: New Horizons is really stepping up. The game continually goes out of its way to make fashion, whether it is designing or wearing it, fun. Not to mention, even at the outset, the array of Animal Crossing clothing available is really solid.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons is available for the Nintendo Switch.