Now before you overreact

[Arrius]

I'm quite sure I have seen them explain that it was a design choice to not give the races visible headgear due to their unique head designs.

Given what I read about that statement, its likely they added those head things beforehand since otherwise the feedback would've been worse as the genderlock was already a topic the players took a bite of.

That the team manages to get those head pieces worked on the new races was likely a thing that was spun from PR to praise the dedication of the team and soothe the playerbase/critics.