how do skins work in this game?

[Lolo]

Are skins tied to specific items ?
IE if I "use" a skin on a given armor, is it gone if I then change said piece of armor?
Ty

[jmido8]

I think you press N it brings up a cosmetic character screen where you can equip skins to certain areas of your character. So you can put a helmet skin on the head and then any helmet you wear will have tha appearance, same with the other skins although I'v heard spells are one time uses or something, im not entirely sure because I'v never boughta spell.

[Rikkore]

Mtx can be equipped by every character you have. Though you cant equip the same mtx on 2 separate chars meaning only 1 can gave that mtx at a time and you'd have to reclaim the mtx when you want to use it on another character. Same goes with skill mtxs.

[Kamiyama]

There are item skins and mtx skins.

You can buy an item skin transfer that will take the skin from one item and apply it to the other. The item providing the skin is lost in the process, but if you take the skin off the changed item you get the item back.

Item skin transfers are cheap but they are consumables. Every time you want to transfer an item skin you have to buy a new one.

These are usually used in conjunction with specific unique items that have special skins or effects on them.
https://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Category:Unique_items_with_3D_art
and
https://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/g00/List_of_unique_items_with_custom_effects?i10c.ua=1&i10c.encReferrer=aHR0cHM6Ly9kdWNrZHVja2dvLmNvbS8%3d&i10c.dv=16
are examples.

There are also a few normal items with unique skins. The sacrificial garb skin is one I like.

MTX skins go into cosmetic item slots that change your appearance. They don't get applied directly to an item and you can change your equipment without losing the MTX skin. MTX skins are generally a lot more expensive than an item skin transfer.

MTX skins are account bound and any of your characters can use them, but only one character can use one MTX skin at a time. If you want a different character to use a MTX skin, you have to unequip it from the character currently using it.

[n,4,t,R,o,N,]

You can only get gloves and no it doesn't give you extra HP.