This is a skirt model by Robert from Children of Morrowind.

http://img846.imageshack.us/img846/4622/66265637.jpg

I'm trying to make the skirt shorter, i.e. raise the bottom part up higher. I'm not savvy in Blender. I'm in Edit Mode and press B to highlight. But whether I right-click or left-click, I can't raise the skirt; Blender just starts doing other weird things.

Another concern is that when I make this skirt shorter, won't the texture be smudged because the mesh is smaller? How would I go about tackling that? Is it a UV Map issue? I know it can be done because Robert made several different lengths of the same skirt and the textures look just fine on all the models. The texture comes from the common_skirt_01 model from vanilla Morrowind.
Thanks.