/3/ - 3DCG

hey frens, i have a bit of a tough nut to crack, i added a cloth simulation to the string of verts hanging from the cube there and it works great. the trouble is i need it to collide with the cube

if you look at the modifiers stack, you can see cloth, skin, collision.
In this order the collision doesn't work.

I can make the collision work by moving the skin above the cloth modifier, but then the cloth simulation works with all the vertices the skin modifier generates which of course results in deformed mess
is there any way around this?