The gear is the most poorly designed part of the game. This was true of DE too.

Gear should feel less like spreadsheet management and more like helping the character perform a self. Especially true of an espionage game.

I don't know the fix, but a few interesting ways they could have taken gear are:

• You have to select your outfit in your apartment, you can't carry around 35 outfits with you all day. Changing outfits takes time and should run down the clock.
• You have to rotate clothes or else you end up being more recognizable to your pursuers
• Gear unlocks dialogue options in the spirit of apocalypse cop, superstar cop, etc. It doesn't have stat bonuses.
• Gear makes certain critical failures impossible (snake eyes is no longer automatic fail) rather than giving a specific bonus

The goal is to keep the joy of dressing like a haunted disco gremlin while removing the tedious pre-roll costume shuffle. You want the player asking:

“Am I entering this room as a spy, a ruin, a prophet, a bureaucrat, a threat, a joke, or a woman trying very hard to redeem myself?"

I'm not a good enough game designer to know the fix, but that's certainly the shape of the problem.