If you want to give an item ‘I want to use that’, he will accept a cloth (and wear it) that he refused to wear with the equip from armor screen… Is that normal and expected?
NPCs are pretty buggy as far as their inventory management is concerned.
And they’re rather rough around the edges in general.
NPCs will remove some of their clothing if given with “use that”. Could be just that the NPC removed something to equip the new item.
With armor screen commands, they will only equip things if they can do so right now.
In the cases I tried, they did not remove anything.