Definitely for the latter.  Actually, a long time ago I zeroed a few common figures and exported just the parts (like a torso, or a foot) I meant to model around.  Makes the Carrara workspace less cluttered.

Organic models -- which include clothing -- have a certain need for contiguous meshes (and preferably a good mesh flow as well).  That's why I use the vertex modeler so much; to get control of the mesh down at the vertex level.  That said, I'm more and more automating more of the process, to where I'm spending as little time as possible tweaking individual vertices.