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[Chimerat]

I know Dwarves need to get new clothing from time to time, but I have a few questions about that process:

1) Do they care about the materials? Is leather better than Pig Tail cloth, for example?

2) How often are they worn out? Does it depend on how active the Dwarf is?

3) What is a "full" set of clothing? (aka What would I tell the Manager to order?)

and 4) ... How do I stop the piles and piles of discarded old clothing from cluttering things up!?

Any and all help is appreciated!

[Dozebôm Lolumzalìs]

1. Not really, but it might make them happier if their clothing is worth more.  See the item values visible in the item screen, next to the weight.  (Note that this is only visible if you have a broker with at least Novice skill.)

2. Let me see...  The wiki doesn't help.  Hmm.  I don't think you need to make more than a set of clothing per year, maybe two.

3. The smallest "full" set of clothing is a tunic, trousers, and shoes.  This is the bare minimum to prevent bad thoughts.  You only need to go beyond for roleplaying, caring about your dwarves, or preventing forgotten beast disease transmission.

4. A refuse pile and a garbage dump zone above said refuse pile.  Use dfhack's "cleanowned" command to remove the ownership of clothes on the floor ("cleanowned scattered"; note that this will also help if someone has dumped owned food on the floor or in their bedroom); this will automatically order them for dumping.  You can also say "cleanowned X" to remove worn clothing, preventing bad thoughts.  (Clothing with wear of X or above causes bad thoughts.)

[PatrikLundell]

1. They seem to have a preference for higher quality, more expensive clothing. If both GCS silk and pig tail masterworks clothing is available, the worn discarded clothing seems to mostly be masterworks GCS silk clothing, indicating that's what they've used. Presumably, individual preferences would override this.
2. My understanding is that clothes become worn after 2 years.
3. I produce a "full" set consisting of 10 items (which happens to be just how much you can fit in on repeat in the workshop. I agree the stuff beyond the minimum probably don't do much (gloves prevents being affected by goo on stuff carried). 10 (correctly selected) production pieces is the maximum set dwarves are able to produce that can be worn at the same time (pairs of gloves etc are single items for production purposes). In addition to this, some exotic stuff (such as underwear and some kind of veil) can be worn. The wiki clothing page provides info on which items compete with each other and which ones can be worn together. As far as I understand, civilians will not wear multiples of items (again, one sock on each foot is not considered a multiple), even if you can get military outfits with multiples to be worn (such as several cloaks, for instance).
4. Cabinets in the dwarves rooms cause reasonably orderly dorfs to store their discarded stuff there, while disorderly ones haul their stuff back to their rooms to be scattered about. I've recently started using "cleanowned scattered x" (lowercase x) get cleanup dumping designations, since it seems the dorfs replace their gear when the wear level becomes x (provided, of course, replacements are available). Obviously, dumping clothing conflicts with any other usage of dumping you had in mind, but that's the least bad I can think of. I have single tile dump zone right beside a clothing stockpile intended to be set up to carry clothing of base quality below masterworks and clothing with a total value below masterworks (to contain inferior quality stuff as well as worn stuff). This stockpile carries bins, and these bins are hauled to the trade depot for disposal when the garbage truck caravan arrives. The inferior quality part is obviously just a role playing kind of thing.
The dump zone tile and associated stockpile are placed close to where caged prisoners are kept for stripping, since that also uses dumping and produces a lot of junk clothing for disposal.

[Chimerat]

While I don't use dfhack (Dwarf Therapist is the closest I'll go to "hacking" the game), that information in quite useful.

There doesn't seem to be a reason to go out of my way for special clothing (though I may dye the cloth first), and "tunic, trousers and shoes" has been noted as the minimum.

I remember going down the huge list in game and not knowing what was required vs what wasn't, and Sock "Artifacts" being created as a seemingly single item (instead of a pair) didn't help matters. 

I'll check the Wiki to see if I want to add anything else, and find something other than Chests to use as a "wedding present" to mark the rooms of couples. (Maybe they can have two chests instead.)

[Daris]

Chests are not used in this version, except to increase room value.  Clothing is stored in cabinets, and dwarves don't claim any possessions except clothing.  One cabinet is generally enough for single dwarves, but married couples sometimes overflow one cabinet, especially when kiddos are old enough to start claiming clothing but haven't yet slept outside Mom's bed to obtain their own room.

If you don't use DFHack's cleanowned command, I don't know how you will prevent dwarves from clinging to their socks forever.  You can mark owned items for dumping, but they won't actually be dumped until the dwarf relinquishes them, which is sometimes never.  I think greedy dwarves, as identified in their personality description, are especially prone to hoarding decaying crap.  Unused clothing acquires a wear level every 20 years, so that decaying crap will be around a long, long time if you don't snatch it away somehow.

[PatrikLundell]

If you don't want to use DFHack you'll have to resort to the worn clothing collection method I used until recently: manually dump every piece of clothing I find scattered about, plus a summer raid every year where all the personal rooms a gone through to dump scattered items as well as items in cabinets (using 't'). With luck the collection is mostly done by the time the dwarven caravan arrives.

The single artifact sock/glove is a pain, as is the fact that the only way to assign the artifacts to dorfs is to draft them (or use DFHackery to force them to equip stuff in the same tile). I'm not too fond of getting 10 masterworks left steel gauntlets but only 5 right ones either.

My standard 3*3 room equipment is a bed, a chest, and a cabinet, all of masterworks quality, with the ambition to give them masterworks doors as well.
When I do use couple markers (not for weddings, as I don't get those, but for the immigrant couples) it's in the form of a second bed. The cabinet is placed in the corner closest to the staircase (to minimize hauling distance for the xsockxs). Note that nobles, who demand multiple cabinets, spread their junk among those, so to help with cleaning I'd stay with a single cabinet. Chests seems to go unused, except as a storage place for food picked up and stashed by bugged part time militia, but that might possibly change in the next release when dorfs start to use adornments.

Daris posted while I pondered:
Manually dump marking items has worked for me until I recently changed the method, and I think the dumping breaks the ownership. However, when I've dumped non worn items stashed away the buggers have usually grabbed new unused stuff to stash away, making that part of the cleanup meaningless.
Daris is correct in that a single cabinet is prone to overflowing for couples and hoarders (it seems to be capable of carrying around 20 items).

[Chimerat]

Okay, thanks. I'll swap my Chest marking with Cabinet marking, since I didn't know the former were effectively useless...

Checking the wiki, it appears there are 11 bits of clothing a non-military Dwarf can wear. I probably won't bother with outerwear unless it's a cold location, though.

[PatrikLundell]

Clothing (only dwarven production covered) http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Armor#Types_of_Protection:
Head: Hood (Cover) | Cap (Over) |  - (Under)
Upper Body: Cloak (Over) | Toga, Vest, Robe, Coat (Over) | Dress, Shirt, Tunic (Under)
Hands: Mittens (Cover) | Gloves (Under)
Lower Body: Trousers (Over) | - (Under)
Foot: Shoes (Over) | Socks (Under)

This sums up to 12 locations to wear clothing on, but only 10 can be covered by dwarven (non artifact) production. There is some variation in what's available to a dwarven civ but I think I've always had 11 things possible to produce, and never with a failure to cover any of the 10 positions, so it seems this variation only hits the upper body Over/Under layers.

[Chimerat]

[...]This sums up to 12 locations to wear clothing on, but only 10 can be covered by dwarven (non artifact) production. There is some variation in what's available to a dwarven civ but I think I've always had 11 things possible to produce, and never with a failure to cover any of the 10 positions, so it seems this variation only hits the upper body Over/Under layers.

Ah ha! I had "Shoes" on my list twice. 

[Abaddon]

Clothing that has been damaged but replaced is stored in a cabinet and sporadically marked as unowned, not sure when this happens, if you have a finished goods pile it will then be moved there.  I tend to go through every few years and atom smash clothing that has deteriorated - though this causes a bad thought my clothiers churn out so much masterpiece clothing it hasn't caused any breakdowns yet.

[Kneenibble]

Is there a specific level of wear at which dwarves will move a piece of clothing to a refuse stockpile instead of a finished goods stockpile, or some other condition?

In the refuse stockpile they rot away so deliciously fast, and the masterworks that disappear in this way do not cause any bad thoughts to the craftsdwarves.  But every old rag ends up mixed in with the fresh shirts rather than taken to the garbage.

[Abaddon]

Is there a specific level of wear at which dwarves will move a piece of clothing to a refuse stockpile instead of a finished goods stockpile, or some other condition?

I've never seen a piece of clothing go to the refuse stockpile.

[Kneenibble]

I've never seen a piece of clothing go to the refuse stockpile.

I made a refuse stockpile for only clothes about ten years into a fort to see how it might work.  When it was first designated, dwarves brought an initial flush of a few dozen pieces that disappeared extremely quickly -- within a month or two.  Since then they bring maybe two or three pieces each year.  Other than that, the pieces of worn clothing they bother to pick up off the floor go to a finished goods stockpile.

They are serving as practice pieces to train up a gem setter, so it's not a complete wash.

[Abaddon]

I've never seen a piece of clothing go to the refuse stockpile.

I made a refuse stockpile for only clothes about ten years into a fort to see how it might work.  When it was first designated, dwarves brought an initial flush of a few dozen pieces that disappeared extremely quickly -- within a month or two.  Since then they bring maybe two or three pieces each year.  Other than that, the pieces of worn clothing they bother to pick up off the floor go to a finished goods stockpile.

They are serving as practice pieces to train up a gem setter, so it's not a complete wash.

The default behaviour is for refuse stockpiles to take clothing, sadly mine never do.

[PatrikLundell]

My understanding is that the next release will allow you to make paper (or whatever the plant fiber/animal hair version is called) out of old clothes, so we'd actually get a use for the current garbage.