Colonists in RimWorld do not like wearing broken rags. If your colonists' clothes are already worn-out, they get a mood debuff. To avoid such debuffs, there is a simple method that I will show you in this post.

Ratty Apparel

In order to get rid off the debuff "Ratty Apparel", you just have to give your colonists fresh clothes. When clothing is worn, its hit points deteriorate slowly until nothing is left of it. But even before that it is recommended to replace the clothings.

There are three debuffs on ratty apparel in RimWorld:

Hit points of the clothing Mood debuff
50%-20% -3
19%-1% -5
No clothing (0%) -6

The only exception to no clothing are colonists with the trait "nudist". These will receive a mood buff of +20 instead. To avoid debuffs for regular colonists, you can customize the outfits.

Outfit Settings in RimWorld
Under Assign > Manage outfits > Select outfit > All, you will find the settings for the default outfit.

The outfits can be adjusted, which clothes may be worn. So it is possible, for example, to allow only clothes of legendary quality, or to forbid pants altogether.

RimWorld: Advanced Tips for Comfort and Quality
With high quality items and furniture, the colonists in RimWorld can do better work. In this post you will find out exactly how quality and comfort interact with each other.

To completely avoid the debuff on ratty apparel, you just have to set the top controller to 51% -100% hit points. With this, the colonists automatically replace clothing that falls below 51% hit points. It is important that there is enough fresh clothing stored that is allowed. Otherwise, the colonists will not wear anything.