[silvarilon]

We have item properties, usually color and material, that are set by the materials it is crafted from.

An example might be that you get felt. You add green dye to it, and now you have green felt. You tailor the green felt into a jacket, and you've got a green felt jacket. You tailor the green felt jacket into a green felt admiral's coat.
There are other additions, such as being able to add buttons (gold toggle clasps vs crude wooden buttons, etc.), trimming, and so on. So you've got a fair number of customizable options.

We've found that players create uniforms ("Our mercenary company all wear black woolen caps, and red jackets") and do still value the unique.

Although anyone can craft an admiral's coat using the above process, the primary descriptions will still be based on the raw materials. That gives a nice amount of freedom to the players (anyone can have a green felt admiral's coat) while still allowing unique rewards. The unique reward would sometimes be a unique item (maybe I offer you a carefully sewn humanskin admiral's coat. Because I'm, y'know, disgusting and crazy) or it could be some unique raw materials (Kill a giant blue snake in the arena and I might offer you a roll of azure snakeskin, which you can then craft into whatever you want)

It also leads to more reuse of the unique items. I can give that roll of azure snakeskin to three different characters, and they'll probably use it for three different things. One might make a snakeskin hat and coat (how pimping!), while another might make a snakeskin cape and scabbard. While another might make hundreds of snakeskin buttons, and set themselves up as a button-merchant with the only supply of snakeskin buttons in the game. Five different "unique" items, even though staff only made one addition.

It also means we can add new item types without much worry. Someone wants us to add a housecoat? We can just do that. Now players can customize their housecoats based on the already-existing options. We don't need to make different unique housecoats for players A and B.

This has, of course, bitten us. Because it's so easy to add unique items, we regularly do. Now every player has a number of unique items, which in a lot of ways is really cool. But it also means unique items aren't nearly as valued as in some other games. Players won't scramble to win that one unique item on offer anymore.