a wild idea that may solve the "million helpers" problem is to have a mode in the MakeClothes script where it only uses the "bounding box" for fitting and does not attempt to match vertex to vertex. Also this could be a failsafe in the script where if it can't match more than 10% of the vertxes it falls back to Bounding box mode.
Example a pancake tutu (Like from the BlackSwan Movie) it could be made with a ring of vertexes at the waist but those are the only vertexes that are even close to the Human Mesh. In this case those vertexes would be used to define size and location for the tutu but no other fitting would be done.
Its either that or have some way of doing "props" since we will end up with needing a LOT of helpers.