Question about equipping armor, clothing, etc.

I know how to mount non-animated objects such as swords and helmets, but I'm trying to find a way to basically assemble the player out of different models. I want the player to be highly customizable, so the head, face, feet, hands etc will all be separate models moving as one. There will be lots of animations too. I'm wondering if it's possible or even desirable to do this with the standard mountpoints, or if there's other ways to do it. Maybe I could have multiple models in the same location, each with full skeletons, each with only certain parts of the player mesh. Then hopefully they'd animate perfectly in sync :/. I saw this resource http://www.garagegames.com/index.php?sec=mg&mod=resource&page=view&qid=10304 but i'm not sure if this would be a good solution for me.
or should I use the hiding meshes method and have huge player model sizes http://www.garagegames.com/index.php?sec=mg&mod=resource&page=view&qid=5421 ?
any help would be appreciated. thanks :)