There is no excuse for SE not to do this... If a free to play mmo like DCUO can do it why cant a AAA mmo do it? DCUO even gives you a STYLE tab so you can see every piece you have earned and the even went as far as dividing each section up in groups like chest pieces and leg pieces. You can even try any piece you want so you can find the look you are going for then click save to equip that glamour FOR FREE at any time and anywhere in the game. IF a player goes afk for a minute or 2 while in a 4 person dungeon you can simply go to your style tab and start messing with your look.

All they need to do is to create a dedicated spot on the server that holds all this info and then tie it to each player. Anytime you want to change your appearance you simply click on the glamour tab which will pop up a window of your character in it so you can start looking through glamour pieces... as you are doing that it will temporarily cache every option you choose and once you are done just simply click save and boom the server instantly updates your look.

Apparently SE doesn't seek out better options to fully optimize their server space. If they are really worried about bottlenecks then limit where a character can change their looks... like only in towns and housing areas.... not a big deal and wont hurt the server load if they learn to delegate their servers.