Very slowly trying to figure out how to do default replacement clothing of my own design, while simultaneously being very rusty on doing most stuff

The two pretty old and musty tutorials I managed to find seem to be saying something along the lines of get your package items extracted, yada yada, and do this and that...plus however many recolors it has.

This brings up my main question, is one able to include additional recolors of say, a dress, where the original package has only one color, and if so how? Bad idea, fine idea? I really have nothing to go on for this one. I would ideally like to include at least several additional color options, whereas my original package has only one color (the blech ugly sack of dusty coal "dressclassic" for elder female.

Or, is it better to just do the one color default replacement and let any recolors be stand-alones?

Thanks for any and all help!

You're probably looking at something like a mix of decustomizing and townifying the clothes, if you want them to act like/show up in the same place as default clothes.

Personally I'd just let recolors be standalone, especially if you want several recolors.

Townifying clothes is a way to make clothes act kind of like they're default clothes, in that they'll show up on new townies/sims, and on sims when they grow up. You can towniefy items and still keep them custom. Can be done with most CAS items, but do it wisely. Some tops/bottoms can cause a bit of a mess, and don't do it to items you don't want sims to randomly spawn in.