Enabling/Disabling multiple object parts

I'm trying to find a way of changing my character's armor(5 different pieces) in game. I've got the animation part right(I guess) but there is another big concern.

I was reading a thread yesterday and it was said to keep all charaters armor parts in one "Master" Object and only enable the one that the character is wearing.

I was thinking of doing just that, but I wonder if it can be done and still make the game smooth.

In this image I have my character and 2 sets of 5 pieces(I plan to have much more), but they are on top of each other righ now, Is there a way I can load my object's parts separately and prevent them from loading at the start of the game?

 

Ok, I found out how to disable the objects and I'm trying to disable the current chest armor and enable the alternative via script(just to see if can work):

Code (CSharp):

1. public class swapping_gear : MonoBehaviour {
2.  
3.     // Use this for initialization
4.     void Start () {
5.     }
6.  
7.     // Update is called once per frame
8.     void Update () {
9.  
10.         var leather_s = GameObject.Find("leather_shoulders");
11.  
12.         if (Input.GetKeyDown(KeyCode.I)){
13.             leather_s.SetActive(false);
14.             leather_s = GameObject.Find("metal_shoulders");
15.             leather_s.SetActive(true);
16.         };

I'm having 2 problems with this:

1 - The current object for the chest armor("leather_shoulders") gets deactivated and "vanishes" as intended, but the second object for the chest armor("metal_shoulders"), wich I manually deactivated in the inspector, doesn't activate, leaving a void where once was a chest.

2 - Animation stops completely...

I know a thing or 2 about programming and OO but I don't know C# syntax very well.

Any help is appreciated

 

What exactly are you trying to achieve here?

 

Well, I imported a fbx wich has 10 animated objects wich are body parts (2x boots, 2x gloves, 2x chest, 2x helmets, 2xlegs) for my character. I'm trying to learn to activate/deactivate them so it seem the character is changing his gear.