I did that initially. Unfortunately the problem that I then ran into is that because there is a large gap between the skirt and the legs, when the legs lift up forwards, the skirt deforms incorrectly. I want to the skirt to only deform when the legs come into contact with it.
What I did now was I used joints from the top to the bottom of the dress 8 times around the skirt. Then I weighted the hips to the top part of the skirt, and then the new skirt joints to the lower part. It seems to work well. However, I still don't know how one would drive the skirt joints when coming in contact with the leg joints