It was a very comfortable era... wear whatever black pants and white shirt you wanted, with an AS clip on tie.

If you were VX and really wanted the legacy AS uniform (hat aficionados?) you were free to buy it.

But this was during a period when they were rolling out a new uniform (which dragged out for years), so it didn't make sense to issue the legacy uniform. Also the AS contract at the time didn't provide for uniform allotment, and VX didn't have a contract so there wasn't a clear CBA mechanism. That's fixed with the new 2024 uniform.