Their houses are a mess as well because they put all their nice stuff in retail and they are constantly asking me for fish and bugs LOL wierdos....
Honestly though I have Julian in a horrible orange top, Peggy in the spider web one, Amelia in Julian's blue sparkly tee, Freya in the green top with the yellow birdie on it, they look a right mess
The closest I've gotten to getting my villagers wear "nice" clothes is through putting some designs up for display in the Able Sisters shop. ; v ; The same thing happens when I give some tops as a gift (or when a villager gives another villager a shirt as a gift and they're like, "oh hey, let's try this on now!") -otherwise, and I think, for the most part, they'll just put it somewhere in their house.
There was one instance where I gifted a shirt to Phoebe and she put it up for sale on Re-Tail a few days later, lol.
- Replaced all of those horrible 'anytown' shirts displayed in Able sis to umbrella designs,
either with the generic patterns or you can just design something, anything, on the spot.
The trick here is to replace all those shirts with patterns of things (like umbrellas) that the villagers CANNOT wear.
Problem solved, and no one need to see or wear those hideous designs again.
- Send your villager the desired shirt in the mail before 5pm. Save and quit. Log in again a littyle past 5pm and see if that villager is wearing the shirt you mailed them earlier - if not, quit without saving, rinse and repeat until they do.
- Or, send 5 of the same shirt in the mail in one go, and they will have to wear it.
Of course, even with all these steps, it won't guarantee that they will wear your desired shirt and keep it on forever:
they can still exchange clothes with each other while you weren't looking.
Gladys spread her Misty Shirt to almost everyone in my town.
But I have great success with keeping most of my town's folks in the shirts that I'd like to see them in.
- You can fill all 8 display slots in your Re-Tail's flea market with disposable items like regular flowers/native fruits etc,
and priced them at max bells. That way, your villagers cannot put up their stuff there. They can still exchange thru gifting each other though.
- Just turned down your villagers' constant requests for bugs/fishes/etc. Just don't do it.
They do that on a constant basis, and it'd be nearly impossible to remove those darn fishes & bugs out of their homes.
So unless you don't mind their houses filled up with such things, just say no.
The easiest method is to empty your inventory, save and continue, and go talk to that villager. If you talk to them a few times, they'll probably offer to buy (or trade) it from you. They'll usually wear it right away but I think that sometimes when they're indoors, you need to walk outside and go back in to see if they've changed into it. If they're not wearing it, just quit without saving and try again. If they're not offering to buy it from you at all, just go do something else, and then save and talk to them again. You can also use the pinging trick if you're feeling lazy (the pinging trick is when you use the swimsuit to stay in the water for at least 5 minutes, and then the first villager you see will ping you). They may ping you over greetings or PWPs but in my experience, if you only have that item in your inventory, that increases the chances that they'll ping you about it.
Another thing you can do is save your game shortly before a mail round (there's one at 9 AM and another at 5 PM), mail them the shirt, wait until a few minutes past that hour, and go find them. If they're not wearing the shirt, you can quit without saving and time travel or wait until the next mail round and try it again.
Sending them multiples of the same shirt helps, but sometimes that means that they'll wear one and display the other one in their houses.
To keep them from wearing patterns from the Able Sisters, just replace all of them for umbrellas or for things that you don't mind them wearing.
Getting rid of shirts that they're displaying can be annoying, but just wait until they invite you and you can buy it from them. The alternative is to send them something that takes up that same amount of space and they'll replace it (you can use the mail round trick to make sure that they replace the right shirt).
You can also save and continue when a villager asks me to make a delivery and then open the package. If it's clothing, don't deliver it or quit without saving, deliver the package, and reset if they wear it and it's just ugly (or display it in their homes).
These are some of the tricks I know of or have used, I hope they help.
I use the send them 5 of the same shirt method. This has worked pretty well, except with Flurry. She will not wear the Santa coat, no matter how many I send to her. She does have one displayed in her house.
villagers with high friendship wear things I send them. Especially when I mail them saying "hey, I found this shirt and thought it would look great on you, wear it, friend!"
So I spent some time yesterday making pro designs, they are pretty simple but cute and were good for a first attempt.
Today Pashmina changed into one of them (YAY) she chose a navy blue with teal details and it matches her antlers which are teal. That totally made my day
I try to save before talking to villagers so I can avoid catching bugs and fish. Bugs aren't that bad, but the fish are really ugly. I keep a stockpile of goldfish for when they ask for river fish, and some seahorses and better looking ocean fish for when they ask for those.
NEVER KEEP ORDERABLE FURNITURE/BUGS/FiSH IN YOUR INVENTORY. Keep furniture in your letters. so villagers one ping and ask for it. Avoiding having fish/asessd fossils/ bugs on you. This will make sure their houses stay nice.
If their houses are full of random clashing items, just order some of their furniture and send it to them in the mail if possible.
I try to avoid fish/bug requests rather than deny them (cos you wanna get their pic)
