Animal Crossing: New Horizons – How to change your appearance and clothes

Stefan L 20/03/20 Comments Closed

Animal Crossing; New Horizons gives you more freedom to change how your villager looks and what they wear than ever before.

There’s so many great get ups and combinations to discover in the game, and we’re just talking about what we’ve seen in the first couple weeks of playing. On top of that, you can completely change how you look whenever you want, with more options to unlock as you play.

For this guide, we’ll be talking about mirrors and wardrobes, but we’ve got plenty of other walkthroughs and tips for Animal Crossing: New Horizons, and more on the way. Visit our game hub to check those out.

Set your initial appearance

You decide how you look right at the very start of the game, when you’re booking your Island Getaway Package with the Nook Twins. At this point, you’ll be a little limited in what you can choose in terms of hairstyles, though you have full freedom with skin tone, eyes, nose, mouth, blush and gender of your character – the gender of your character has no affect on your appearance options.

Don’t worry, because you won’t be stuck like that forever (unless you want to be!) and can change it up once you gain a mirror.

How to get a Mirror

Getting a mirror and wardrobe are things that should fairly early on, but aren’t entirely scripted into the game’s progression.

Mirrors can be received in a number of ways. You can find one in a present, so make sure to talk to your neighbours each day, shoot balloons out of the sky and shake trees to see if furniture falls out. You can also get a DIY recipe for a mirror, and this was one of the first recipes we received from the daily message in a bottle that washes up on the shores.

Change up your look at a Mirror

Once you’ve received or crafted a mirror, you can place it wherever you want, whether that’s inside your house or just out in the open world. Just walk up to it and tap ‘A’ to enter the character customisation tool.

Here, you’re given the full freedom to modify your appearances once more, just as you had at the start of the game.

But wait… there’s more options to come!

Unlock more hair styles

You only have a relatively small range of 8 hairstyles to start with, but can get so, so many more!

As soon as you arrive on the island, you’ll actually have 2 more hairstyles to choose from, but once you’ve unlocked Nook Miles+ from paying off your initial loan to Tom Nook and upgrading from a tent to a house – more on this in our Quick Start Guide – you’ll be able to unlock more hairstyles at the Nook Stop terminal in the Resident Services Tent.

Simply access the terminal and pick Redeem Nook Miles. You’ll see the following options:

Top 8 Pop Hairstyles – 2,400 Miles
Top 8 Cool Hairstyles – 2,400 Miles
Top 8 Stylish Hair Colors – 3,000 Miles

Personally we’d say to hold off on these until after you’ve bought more essential upgrades, like the quick tool select wheel and a larger pocket inventory, but it’s entirely up to you!

Changing your outfit

Changing your outfit can be as simple as picking new clothing items from your inventory and putting them on, or removing clothes using you’re wearing using the little clothes icon in your inventory.

However, there’s also much better ways to do this with a Wardrobe.

How to get a Wardrobe

Getting a Wardrobe can also happen in one of two ways: you can be gifted one or make one for yourself using DIY.

In both our saves, we were gifted a wardrobe by the Happy Home Association sending us one in the mail a few days after we moved into a house.

You can also craft your own wardrobe, and you will get a DIY recipe for a simple wooden wardrobe as part of Tom Nook’s tutorial on customisation. This came one week after we moved to the island. Just follow his instruction to construct and then customise the wardrobe however you like.

Get Changed at a Wardrobe

Just as with using a mirror, simply walk up to a wardrobe and press ‘A’ to use it. This enters a brand new outfit customisation tool, letting you pick and preview any set of clothing before deciding to put it on. It’s pretty great!

Buy new clothes from Able Sisters

As you grow your island, you’ll eventually be able to help the Able Sisters set up a shop and start selling a wide range of clothes. One new element here is the changing rooms, where you can preview all of the clothing items available in the store quickly, as well as checking them out in different colours. If you like what you see, you can put together a brand new outfit, pay for it and walk out the door wearing it – Mabel will ship your other clothes to your home’s storage.

Use NookLink and QR codes to import clothes, art & more

Another thing you can do is import custom designs from Animal Crossing: New Leaf and Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer using QR codes. This hooks into the Nintendo Switch Online smartphone app, and we’ve got a dedicated explanation of how to do so here.