The tutorial makes no mention of clothing having an effect on taming.
The only information that the game contains to suggest that clothing matters for any purpose beyond role play is that only recently have poor diligence lessons (but not refused ones!) suggested that suitable clothing might help.
Things that a new player would be expected to intuit about items without any hints in-game:
Items have specific numerical effects per day that are hidden
The player is expected to know that certain items affect slave stats in any way whatsoever. The player is expected to know that taming growth within a reasonable time threshold is reliant on micromanaging outfits. Testing to see nightly taming growth is not possible for a new player, at least until obtaining the Raven Crown to see debug stats on the aura (which one of the devs rather amusingly dismissed as not useful to a new player several pages back). This necessitates raising a Leviathan, which subsequently requires the expense of a pen, and a slave with superior obedience to keep the Leviathan milked and alive long enough to turn it in. A slave who must be trained to do this without a basic understanding of how Taming works.
Even if they do manage to figure out relative item effects on taming, some items have hidden pitfalls in addition to mood such as lowering nature or temperament, which would not be directly communicated to the player until they noticed a drop in the slave's stats. Some might consider it unreasonable for an inexperienced player to see an overnight drop in Empathy and somehow intuit that it is coming from the spiked collar, whose description cryptically reads "makes her feel more aggressive."
Item effects on aura are compiled overnight
This is a mechanical feature that is also not immediately apparent to players. Even if it were clear to players that the Plumed Bridle increased taming significantly at a large mood penalty, there's not really any way for them to determine WHEN the item's bonus is applied. Does making her put on a fancy horse hat for a painting lesson apply it to the lesson at a cost to her mood and diligence (because she's wearing a huge impractical feathered headdress?) Sure, maybe it could. We're all playing "guess the dev headcanon" here anyway. Get the raven crown and check the aura to find out.
Of course it turns out that it's an overnight calculation, which is at least a little less insane than it being for every lesson. But still insane enough that in this game about training slaves, the last step of the day after the lessons are done and the rewards and punishment are doled out is to strap the slave into an eclectic mix of plumes and bobbles to sleep in because it micros the greatest stat boost. Or does it? I'm relying on the wiki here and who knows if that's even up to date.
I find it very illuminating when player concerns over tight time restrictions are replied to with a request for the save file and ultimately an example of how the dev would handle the difficult slave. While I respect the effort taken to show that the unwinnable scenario is, in fact, technically possible, it's always via a series of steps that only make sense to someone who is already deeply, intimately familiar with the game and its mechanics.
But so long as easy modes and cheat menus exist, it's fine for the game to be balanced to the highest and hardest tier possible, right? Anyone who isn't willing or able to play "guess the developer's reasoning" can just go play in the corner.
On an unrelated note, I was playing a recent dev branch and noticed that my Slaver Strength was stuck at A-Strong for a very long time despite making a dedicated effort to eat S+ food, have sex multiple times daily, and spar daily. After decades in-game with no sign of progress, I opened up the code and debug mode to figure out why. It turns out that food and sex won't raise your strength past A at all anymore. It has to be sparring. Smacking down dozens, hundreds of amazons in the same repetitive click fight, grinding day after day, for decades to get the strength variable to 666 before it ticks over to Herculean. This seems unnecessarily grindy and repetitive.
