Armoured Clothing
Armour is about as much Style as it is Protection

Why is this a good thing? Because, in the Cyberpunk genre, armour is often as much about utility as it is about fashion choice. The ability to custom make armour, with different triggers requiring different skills would be fun. What isn't fun is constantly seeing people wear the standard, default armours. It's boring and takes away from a more colorful game world.

It's possible that is no longer the case, and having customized armor would definitely be awesome if it could be done in a way that wouldn't slow the game down overall.

Clothes don't need GM approval and, if I wanted to, I could make a piece of clothing with ridiculously, theme-breaking description. I don't think it should need 'GM approval'. If there's a piece of armour, like with clothing, that doesn't fit, they can just message, edit, etc. I see no reason why armor would need any more steps than clothing, in terms of moderation.

Then there's the issue of a good amount of tailored material in the queue just being very, very poor quality work, full of typos, not using pronoun switches, having entire blocks of messaging missing or using default messages.

Don't get me wrong, I totally support the idea of more armor = more gooder and that the game should be style over substance in a lot of cases. I'd love for there to be the ability to make armors, or for that matter, to give the ability to customize existing armors with your own personal battle damage or insignia. It's just that armor is a very powerful thing in the game, it's prone to abuse right now (see thugs wearing a mountain of junk over their armor so it's a humongous pain in the ass to remove) and that the proposal you've given is going to further allow for player abuse. Player abuse, which, has been a recent topic of discussion in the game and caused a number of balance changes in the past few months. Just something to consider.

Also, I don't care if there is an indication that the item is armored unless it is so armored as to be noticable. Padding a three piece suit, for example, should be noticeable. It bloats the suit and makes it less attractive.

If you're going for a John Wick-esque type of insert though, not noticeable at all, but less protection and *suck on his teeth* "Quite painful, I'm afraid."

I would like to +1 @Kalii's idea for a munition's machine (maybe even the item that works with armor already) that can alter the looks of pre-programmed armor. Maybe you could choose from a very limited list of colors, and you can tack on additional look to the armor, with the entire sentence being in that color. Better yet, if it could work on Skinwriter principles, you could have one short text that is added to the @worn descriptor for what people see when they look at someone, and a more explicit description when you look at the item itself.

-Look at Joe-

Joe Schmoe is wearing a neXus trenchcoat. <> There is an awesome looking snake painted on the back of it.

-Look at Coat-

((Descript of neXus trench)) <> Long description of awesome looking snake.

Also, I would like to take the idea further, and allow alterations of armor coverage. Are your pants too heavy for your tastes? Have your tailor/munition person turn them into some tactical Daisy Dukes. While there may not be enough material in a neXus coat, a tailor can probably figure out how to close it up. Though as like repair jobs, hopefully your tailor won't wreck your coat and weaken it in the process.

Bouncing off @RatchetEffect's idea though, having items such as composite carbon diamond alloys future-tech ballistic plates to add a little protection to tailored clothing would be kinda cool as well. Since the item has already been created, it shouldn't be hard to affect the variables already made. And as always, having a tailor on hand who can do this would now be an asset.

Just my 2c.

Your assessment that the economy is too reliant on fixers is a good one. And you're right in the fact that anyone who's put into a serious combat position, either by choice or by decision, gets to pretty much live in their armor. It's not great, and I remember it being something that used to bother me quite a bit when I was newer at the game, come to think of it.

The thing about custom, flash looking stuff is that every precedent in the game is set up such that if you want anything custom, flashy, style over substance or however else you want to put it, you are forced to farm insane amounts of chyen in order to acquire. Back before vehicle combat, take a look at cars. You had a bunch of coupe/sedans that could seat more or less 5 people. Some were cheap, some were comically expensive. The difference was entirely in the flex of being able to say 'yeah, I pissed away a whole lot of money for this, look at how big my e-ego is.'

The entire game is hand-catered to tailors as it is, unfortunately. We have a handful of shop clothing in each sector, all of which is ugly as hell and sucks, specifically so we're forced to dump money on people with a single skill. In the case of intense specialization, like an AV mechanic or a cybersurgeon, I think this kind of bottlenecking is ok, however, it's also the case with fashion.

Have you ever put in builder requests for redecoration or god forbid actual rennovations of a place? I have, and I can tell you that sometimes you're looking at upto well into the six figure range to get it done.

For this matter, why does tailored clothing even take damage in the first place? Repairs trash the value of the clothing, so why not have it simply disintegrate or go up in a huge conflagration when you get near a open flame? Do players not naturally die, lose, or grow tired of old clothing, just to drive more into the game system naturally? Of course.

The point that I'm trying to get at isn't one that I'm really proud to be making or something I'm going to shake my pom-poms about. Sindome isn't really a cyberpunk game. It is a game that wastes enormous amounts of player's time and energy grinding money that tends to last exceedingly short amounts of time. It wants you to then waste precious little spare money you get to look cool or fashionable. It's not themely to the cyberpunk genre at all when it comes to it's artistic and expressive design. It is a game that heavily favors people smashing skulls in over having arguments or debates over things, putting on fashion shows or music concerts. That said, for me personally, of all the non-combat related stuff in the game, this is probably just about in the dead last position for things to fix, or add upon.

I want more armors. I want more styles. I want not having to go to the same handful of people to spend every chyen my character earns on rebuying the exact same shit every single time I die. But artistry does not need to be the skill doing this, and there's a staggering amount of things that I'd prioritize over tailoring armor, or armorsmithing, whatever you'd like to call it. I mean, we still have archetypes that are staples of the genre that fundamentally don't work in SD because of a lack of coded support, dev time and ability. I'd do a backflip to see forensics or decking or some of the other less represented or outright meme-worthy skills to get some attention.