Mabel and Sable, longtime monopoly-holders of the Animal Crossing franchise’s fashion market, have a pretty heavy backstory. Sable’s the shyer of the two, but she warms up the more the player talks to her at her sewing machine. Wouldn’t want anyone to feel left out in a franchise all about making friends—and boatloads of Bells—right?
Well, keep a warm thought in your heart for Sable, because she’s been through a lot. In Wild World, talking to her enough times will result in her opening up about her and Mabel’s childhood: their parents died when they were young, so Sable ended up raising Mabel on her own. She doesn’t go into details, but it must have been rough, because one of the few things we know for sure about their childhood is that at one point, Mabel’s claws ended up getting frostbitten.
Sable spins the anecdote as the start of her interest in clothes and fashion design, because the first thing she ever made was a pair of gloves for Mabel—who promptly put them on her ears, because little sisters will be little sisters—but frostbite? Hello? It certainly explains why Mabel’s the saleswoman of the Able Sisters, rather than joining her sister behind the sewing machine.
The Ables’ backstory doesn’t end there though, because there’s another one of them: that’s right, Label, the middle sister who ran off to the city and left Sable to raise Mabel alone. Fittingly introduced in City Folk, she’s first encountered at GracieGrace—Gracie’s fashion store—under the name Labelle. There’s not much to her at first: she’s pleasant, polite, and something about her sure seems awfully familiar, but speaking with her alone reveals little about her past.
It’s not until New Leaf that the sisters’ full backstory is unveiled. Talk to Sable for 10 days in a row and she’ll tell you that their parents passed when Mabel was too young to remember anything, leaving Sable—who is 10 years older than Mabel, though the age gap between herself and Label is unknown—in charge of the family. At some point, Label and Sable had a massive argument and Label left for the city to make a new life for herself, where she met Gracie and took on the name Labelle. City Folk has Label sending letters to Mabel in hopes of reconciling with her family, but while Mabel wants them all to get along again, she isn’t too optimistic about Sable’s feelings toward their prodigal sister. Talk about deep lore!
Fast forward again to New Leaf, and everything seems to have worked out. Gracie runs GracieGrace by herself in the T&T Emporium because Label’s working at the Abel Sisters, selling accessories in the extension to the main store. She’s still going by Labelle, but given that she definitely got the short end of her family’s naming convention stick, who can blame her?
Feeling sad about the Able sisters yet? It’s true that their history is a little out of place in a setting where players’ biggest problems usually have to do with expanding their McMansion. For those who feel as though this kind of backstory is too dark for Animal Crossing, don’t worry—someone in the team must agree with you, because New Horizons retcons their backstory. No sisterly estrangement here, no sir. While I believe Mabel and Sable’s parents are still very much dearly departed, as far as the game reveals, Label left the family business with her sisters’ blessing to start her own designer brand “Labelle”.
Frostbite trauma, nada. Feelings of abandonment and betrayal, zilch. Tense reconciliation, nope. New Horizons spins the sisters’ history into something more optimistic, tying in with the game’s trend of turning Tom Nook into a sympathetic figure and making the villagers significantly nicer and more easygoing. There’s lots of mixed feelings about that going around the playerbase, and it’s about time the Able sisters’ backstory made a splash in that great big ongoing debate.
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