Material: get obj 1 vertex offset from morph and apply to obj 2

I have a character with body morphs and need to deform the character’s clothing based on those morphs (without having to make corresponding morphs on every clothing item)

I believe it can be done using a material, essentially getting the vert offset from the morphs on the character mesh and applying the same offset to verts on the clothing mesh(?)

However I’m not exactly sure on how to do that, any info would be great.

I suppose I have two main questions -

1: in a material, how to get the vert offset of a mesh?

2: how to match which vert on the clothing mesh receives that offset? (Is there a way to find the closest vert on the clothing mesh for example? Or should the character and clothing have uvs layed out the same or something like that?)

Any info would be great, I keep going around in circles on Google trying to find the answer