Would there be any way to create clothing items that take up armour slots? I've been thinking about "enchanters" and how unarmoured players are significantly penalized in terms of their enchanting capacity relative to armour wearers. It would be cool if a mod could introduce clothing to traditional armour slots.

I haven't seen it been done, hell I've never seen it being discussed either.

It's certainly possible, but for what you're describing, there's not much reason to do it. All you'd have to do is make some new clothing items with increased enchantability stats.

Also, I think Hilgya the Seamstress and that mod's expansion have some clothing items that use armour slots. It was done in that mod so the player could have a shirt then a seperate vest overtop of it, as well as a few other things.

yeah, this issue is why unarmored is not really an efficient way of playing, it is even only viable because the game is so easy.

Actually creating clothing that has higher enchantment limit that isn't boots or gloves would just maintain the gap, on the other hand adding new clothing slots (cape, brooch, etc) would increase number of "always equipped" options available to unarmoured (increase number of CE options) which UA sorely needs compared to armour. I'll look into the seamstress mod tho.