I think creating big areas of color, be it chest stripes, leg stripes, wing stripes, tail fins, etc... with either stickers or decals just doesn't look great and gives me a toy-like vibe. And it can be hard to color match the decal if there's a bit of color not covered by the decals. And then there's trying to accent panel lines across a decal...
If push came to shove I'd probably rob stencil/pilot name/registration and other small markings from a Hasegawa kit. The basic 1/71 VF-1 is pretty cheap.