I agree completley, there was almost no aesthetic design in SS. We have all this greatness by way of upgrade system and visuals, but Link looks the same throughout the game. I personally loved the Iron Shield evolution and the Hylian shield, other than that everything felt drab and boring.
EDIT: I was totally expecting for SS to have multiple tunics because it promised us that "adventure" feeling...but we didn't get that.
I would have loved for the Mirror Shield to return as an equippable, even if just for the design and lack of "mirror" effect (it would be even better if the Mirror Shield had the ability to do what it did in OoT in the Spirit Temple boss battle, just saying). The Sacred Shield line all looked the same to me, didn't really interest me but that's just me. The Hylian Shield can never NOT look awesome. It's just like...the perfect blend of colors and design. I loved every last bit of it. If we had more shields and some status effects (I noticed that there is no enemy whatsoever that can freeze you in SS!), I think the shields area would be well filled.
On the topic of tunics...I'm sort of with Axle in having multiple armors, but at the same time the simple garb color change seen in OoT would be equal in my eyes. I just didn't like that the Goron Tunic's effect of negating most fire damage was transferred to the incredibly dull looking Fireshield Earrings (the earrings are supposed to be BLUE, Nintendo!) and the ability to swim was transferred [somewhat] from the Zora Scale + Zora Tunic to the dragon scale thing. I just like being able to customize Link – if he's supposedly our ingame avatar, we should have some degree of control over how he looks besides simple 'take off shield, put shield on'.