@cyncie We might have had several patches go through, because we hadn't played in Online mode very much. We're choosing to see it as a do-over.
And we just discovered a way to soften the blow considerably. We checked our Gallery, and the Sims we have saved there are all sporting their CC clothing and hairstyles. We can delete the hairless underwear-only Simmies from our save and replace them with the versions we have saved in our Gallery. Some of them have skills, because they were created to fill particular roles in a story.
We're only going to completely make over our main Sims, the ones we've played in this save. They have acquired skills, and some of them have careers.