"So here I've been for years with a full wallet and no merchants willing take my money so I can keep my V2's in fresh gear. "

The free Stephanie I "Maxine" cr2 not only works with Stephanie I, but also with V1, V2, V2LO, Stephanie I LO, and Valerie 2-LO, by just replacing the object references.
That means all of them can wear V3 clothing with very little or no adjustments at all:

Here´s V2 LO wearing one of Serge Marck´s V3 dresses.
Not bad for 18331 vertices, eh ?
(V3 has 72712 vertices)

But of course there ARE situations where you need all the vertices you can get, for example if you want a very slim body where you can actually "count the ribs", or if you want to create
a very muscular body which is properly "ripped".
Also an elderly person needs more polys to create proper wrinkles and folds, or an alien creature needs extra polys to create non-human head shapes.

But for the majority of young, fit, but neither too muscular nor overly slim female characters, standard V3 is most often too heavy, and either V2 or V3 RR will do just fine.  :-)

stahlratte