There are not many stores on your island, but there is a local general store with limited supplies and one clothing store. Otherwise things fall from the sky in the form of presents attached to floating balloons that you must shoot down with a sling shot or neighbors and other island visitors who give you gifts. For example Wisp, the resident ghost gifting you for helping him gather up his scattered spirit peices or Gulliver the seagull who gets washed up on shore and needs help fixing his phone. It’s all luck of the draw on what you acquire. Everything else you need to build yourself in DIY recipes that everyone seems to claim is their own original design because they had a dream about it, yet everyone seems to know the design all the same. Did everyone have the same dream?
The clothing store is called Able Sisters. It was started by three hedgehogs named Sable, Mabel and Label, aka Labelle.
Sable can always be found in the back of the store on her sewing machine. She seems to never leave and when the weather is nice she even states it only makes her want to work harder, sewing more clothes and coming up with new patterns. Sable is shy and if you speak to her she will inform you that she is busy. However, if you visit her every day she will warm up and start to see you as a friend and will eventually if you persist in speaking with her give you free patterns for customized clothing.
Mabel is the sister who runs the store. She will greet you at the door when you walk in, follow you around and show you to the changing room, taking your money and shipping what you purchased from the changing room to your home storage. Mabel seems rather stuck up and above herself. If you talk to her sister that is constantly working in the back of the room she will sometimes yell at you to only speak to her because she is the one who runs the store. However she will also join in the conversation. It is as if she does not want you to befriend her sister because it stops her from slaving away, yet she wants to be included at the same time so she gives in and tries to be nice.
Label used to work at the store, but she went off to start her own fashion design. She can be found occasionally standing in front of resident services with a clipboard and some suitcases next to her. If you speak to her she will inform you that she is conducting a survey so she can come up with a new line of clothing. For example, she will ask you to go home and change into an outfit that someone would wear if they were on vacation. She will then give you a free article of clothing and mail you a tailors ticket worth up to 3000 bells going towards one item at the Able Sisters clothing store.
If you take Label up on her offer and show her your idea of the theme she suggested, she will look you up and down and decide if you did a good job matching her image. Here’s the thing however, when she asked me to go home and change into something someone would wear on vacation I changed into a comfortable outfit of jeans, a casual shirt, a sun visor and comfortable but stylish shoes, because my vacation would be walking up and down the boardwalk for miles or hiking in the woods. She told me she didn’t think my outfit matched the vacation theme. I guess her idea of a vacation would be on a cruise ship sipping fine wines and spirits in a fancy dress. But she never specified what type of vacation she envisioned.
I’m not complaining mind you. I still got my free article of clothing from her latest fashion line and my free tailors ticket mailed to me. I am just pondering the way fashion styles change from year to year. What is in and what is not. Who gets to decide that? Like when someone says you are supposed to wear darker colored clothes in the colder seasons and lighter colored clothes in the warmer seasons. Or how colorful shorts they called jams used to be a sudden fashion trend in the 1980s or how bell bottom pants used to be a trend in the 1970s. The way your pants need to be a certain length to match your shoes. And don’t even get me started with the socks and the way they need to look just right with it all. Who gets to decide what is “in style”? Think about it, there are about 8 billion people on this planet and about 350 million people in the United States. How do millions of people all suddenly agree that one style is no longer acceptable over another. As if people do not have their own creative mind beyond picking an already existing genre where there are rules in how to be accepted into the club. They must all follow along like sheeple. I heard about people called influencers, but wow! That is some powerful influencing.
