Problem with scripting ideas for project

I’m trying to make a flash app where a clothing item is loaded into a window and the user picks colors from a separate window to change the color of each piece of the clothing item. For example, the user can change the color of each sleeve of a t-shirt. (Kind of like Nike ID)

However, I’m having problems with loading each part of the clothing item into the app (as Movieclip objects). Every time we load a vector part, it becomes a graphic instead of a movie clip. Is there any way to fix this?

Is there any way to save a movieclip in a SWF and have the movieclip format preserved so that it can be loaded into another SWF and keep its instance name?

Any ideas on how to go about this project would be appreciated.