First issue with the mesh already exsisting, sometimes maya likes to remember things it should not like when you duplicate a mesh sometimes it remembers the old name
if you change the name like "dress" to "dressWorkDamnYa" then change it back it can fix those issue just make sure its "dress" and "dressShape"
if that does not work then you can always see if its hanging onto some ghost mesh or something by using the connections menu
It should have a mesh and a transform but sometimes it has 2 meshes and ones a ghost
For the texture issue have a look at the body.ini and these 2 values
Code:
view_offset = 0.03;
norm_offset = 0.003;
norm_offset = 0.003;
im assuming change them so they are higher