Clothes don't hold up as well as furniture, do they? They probably couldn't have simply bought old clothes. It was probably a chore to make the actor's costumes, and given the show's notoriously limited budgets... Maybe that accounts for why Ange and some of the others (Beth and Rachel come to mind) only seemed to have a couple of outfits.
The actresses' dresses all have zippers. That means they must have been made post 1920s because zippers were not invented until the twenties.
From what I've read on listservs before, the costumes from most of the historical storylines except I think 1841??? were all rented.
Then again, I've always heard that prior to the advent of modern conveniences like washing machines, people didn't have many clothes. That still doesn't account for Angelique's limited number of frocks. Couldn't she just whip up a Worth gown, or whatever? 
LOL! Although, too early for Worth (I could be wrong though).
As far as number of outfits, you have to consider a number of things, mainly that most clothing was made from scratch. You didn't go into a store and buy something off the rack. At least not to the extent that we had even in the 20th century--IIRC, they may have begun some mass production, but the quality was poor and these things were geared for the working classes.
People did wear fewer clothes, but they changed them more frequently. Almost all the people in this 1897 story are either wealthy or living in wealthy surroundings. A woman of Judith's station would have changed her dress probably a minimum of three times a day. The family would have "dressed" for dinner: evening dresses for the ladies, black tie for the men. IIRC, the only character who actually ever does this is Kitty, Lady Hampshire (btw, not Lady Kitty, because she gets the title not by birth, but by marriage only). Kitty has great clothes, btw and if you want to know how mourning fashions progress, watch her wardrobe. Faster than proper, but correct.
Beth has apparently two dresses and that works. She's a maid and that would be about right. That she sports those elaborate coiffures is inaccurate. In the first place, as a maid she'd be expected to keep her appearance very simple; servants were supposed to be invisible and not go above their station. In the second, she'd never have the time to get her hair that elaborately curled and in the third, that looks like a two-person do, if ever I saw one. Beth would
not have someone to help her dress.
That Judith has a huge wardrobe does make sense--very wealthy woman of good family=lots o'clothes. That she's flouncing around in hot pink and lipstick says something else entirely. "Nice" women did not wear cosmetics, or at least, cosmetics that looked so obvious and a middle aged woman would have been considered too old to wear pinks and reds and such.
Connie's right about the men. Quentin, Edward and Carl, should have had a fair number of suits. Again, would have been custom-made, but that would have been the norm.
I get annoyed that the women all rush around outdoors sans hats and wearing some of the most inappropriate clothing I have ever seen. Women, even sluttish women, wore hats if they stepped foot out of doors. Period. End of story. De rigeur. Plus, they're so much fun!
What bothers me a lot is that the wardrobe goodies (regardless of year) are never even remotely evenly divided. Diana Millay and Lara Parker, both of who have pretty meaty roles and who play characters who are in upper class circumstances get extremely meagre numbers of outfits. Rachel, the governess, who would have had a pathetic salary, on the other hand, has like five or six dresses--makes absolutely no sense.
I don't know about the shoes for the men or the women (the only thing I do know is that little girls often had button boots and women wore kid slippers to dance in). Sorry 'bout that.
Is Happybat around? She knows a lot more about costuming than I do.
