Photoshop :: Organizing Many-layered Image

Basically, what i have is an image of a character. kind of a perspective view, 2.5D if you will :p

Each part of the character fits in a certain place in the layer order. He faces to the right, so the left arm/leg must be at the bottom, then the torso/head in the middle, and the right hand side of him at the top. It's a little more detailed than that, but you have the general gist of it, the order of each part must be maintained.

Now aside from that, i actually have two sets of parts. One is the base character, naked. And one is clothing/Armour for all those body parts. I'm planning to make several more outfits and right now it's getting kind of unmanageable.

Again, like the draw order quoted above, the outfit parts must also be in their correct place, each one exactly above the body part it goes on, and below the bodyparts that draw on top of it. So i end up with these two sets of layers interleaving, in a very messy way.

So, what i'd like to do, is figure out some way of sorting things a bit better. I'm not too familiar with the deeper workings of Photoshop, but i've heard of smart objects, linking layers, and grouping layers with the little folder button.

What i'd like to be able to do, would be, at a minimum, to toggle the visibility of an entire set of layers at once, without affecting the other sets. If it's possible, it'd also be nice to be able to transform, and use filters/adjustments/selections on an entire set of layers simultaneously, too.

What's absolutely important is that everything maintains it's proper position in the draw order, and everything is non-destructive. no merging of layers.