How to stop villagers changing their clothes ...

[MayorChick]

There is a craze sweeping my town for the green shirt with a yellow duck. Almost all my villagers are wearing it.

I've reported a few to Isabelle and they have swapped into plain white tops. How can I stop this though.

I've read about putting hats on display but I only get the option to change the pattern, and all my patterns are paths!

 

[lazuli]

Try displaying umbrellas. That seems to help a lot of people.

 

[Titi]

You can put a path as a hat display.
It won't be very pretty hahaha, but it will work.

 

[Syndra]

changing the displayed clothes into things that are not wearable (at least not wearable for villagers; e.g. hats, umbrellas) should work; and yes, just as Titi said, you can use path designs and turn them into hats, etc.
afterwards, you can mail them the clothes you want them to wear! although there's a chance that they'd end up displaying them in their houses instead.

 

[Pirate]

Or you design a school girl/sailor suit as a sleeveless shirt and display it in an array of different colours and watch your villagers walk around in them like my town. :B (seeing Moose and Grizzly wearing them was a bit disturbing though..)

 

[Hypno KK]

Pick the option to change the pattern, then pick a random one. She'll ask you how you want to display it (what kind of mannequin or something) and then you can pick umbrellas or hats. It'll look weird but it doesn't matter, since the idea is just that the villagers can't buy and wear those items for themselves so they can look whatever way you want and it won't make a difference.

Whenever I've reported villagers to Isabelle, their clothes have never turned white, they just changed into their default or kept on their old ones. You could try that again though and also buy and send them the clothes you want them to wear. If you get options where they ask you about their outfits, I think giving them a bad rating makes them more likely to change too. If they start displaying the clothes in their houses, you can mail them things like chairs. You can also start trying to get them to invite you over because when they do, if you stay and talk to them long enough they'll let you take/buy something off their house and you can get the shirts they're displaying.

I've noticed that sending the same shirt a few times in a row with letters saying "WEAR THIS" really clearly helps, though that may just be a coincidence.