I feel the game would be a lot more comical/entertaining/humorous/whatever if you were able to see the clothes you equipped your character with. Like if you have the cone helmet, and equip it, your guy is wearing a cone. the player model. Im not sure if this is too difficult to do or something, i simply think it would bring a whole new level of awesome to the game.
It is too troublesome for too little gain, considering you'll need to have at least four sprites for every piece of equipment: and you'd probably need more than that to address character movement, etc.
Their previous blog entry went into the specifics as to why this isn't possible http://www.gaslampgames.com/blog/2011/07/14/crashes-cynical-brit-feature-request-faq/ We will be getting a female sprite in the future though.
While it is certainly esthetically more pleasing to see your character wearing his equipment, there is a trade-off. Making graphics for all the items and making them work in all situations will take a lot of time, but more importantly it'll make adding new items to the game way harder. With limited funds and a small team you really can't do both lots of content and fancy graphics. Personally I'd like the game to stay flexible rather then give that up for graphics.