As I mentioned with the hooded robe, full pieces of clothing that usually replace the mesh parts and need the full skeleton plus the master pose component hookup.
because of the way cloth works (currenly) you have almost no hope of preventing penetration of the underlying mesh with bckkstop/backstop radius. So you likely want to remove/replace that mesh in lieu of one that contains both items…
Let me give you a proper example of that.
I have a naked character as base with the following modular pieces:
2 arms, 2 shoulder, head, chest, pelvis, 2 legs
Now let’s say that I want to put on a kilt (thats a skirt).
to get something that truly works, without penetration of underlying mesh and clipping on the legs, ill want to replace the legs out to a mesh that doesn’t really reach all the way to the pelvis. Then, the pelvis will be swapped out with a mesh that contains the kilt, the thighs, and the pelvis.
ideally, the new kilt mesh needs to all be one material, so that you can import the kilt vertex paint to allow for the cloth, and at the same time you can use self collision with the thighs to prevent penetration and clipping.
As far as skinning goes, to re-re-re- state it. You need to use the whole skeleton for the master pose component node to work.