You can call me Nostradamus if you want. No seriously, we all knew this was gonna be his excuse anyway.
Now, this is what's really going on (in my opinion);
He's rendered both images twice. First time the way he wanted them to be, and a second time with faulty parts for this devblog. It's not the clothes taking more time, it's stoper spending less time working on the project and so he's always in need of new excuses to justify the constant slowdown of development for every single update in the past 2-3 years. He's never mentioned issues like that before, ever. It's never taken him such a long time to release a tiny update, ever. So, who exactly is buying this nonsense? Isn't it such a funny coincidence that he couldn't make it in August because of dozens of "faulty" renders, which he's only noticed towards the end of August? Oh no, poor guy!
Anyway, the main focus should be on this particular part:
"I had to re-render some images, and it did add an annoying extra step in the workflow for each image where Jess is wearing the blazer. But I like how it looks, so I'll probably use it in again the future, however annoying it may be."
He's quite literally setting up another excuse for him to use in the future, because he is in dire need of new excuses considering how everything is constantly going downhill. Gotta justify it somehow, right?
Something along the lines of: "Remember what I told you last year? The extra step to make difficult clothing look good? Yeah..that's why it's gonna take another 6 months, this scene is super difficult. Oops, Sorry! Thanks for the support anyway! xoxo"
Seriously, anyone who is buying his statements at this point is just incredibly naive and gullible.
Stoper 4 years ago: Releases updates every few months working on a dual-1080 rig.
Stoper now: Releases 1 update per year working on a monster rig equipped with a 4090 and improved software.
Hmmmm, yeah. It sure is the blazer.