Every time I try to wear a skin, shape or anything it says I have to wait for it to download.

[Destiny Teardrop]

However, nothing downloads and I'm stuck as a noob.

 

[Rolig Loon]

That sort of message is usually a sign that you have a weak or intermittent Internet connection.  Even if the connection is perfectly good for things like e-mail, web browsing, and some games, SL will spit up if it finds that it doesn't have enough bandwidth or a continuous enough connection for the constant trading back and forth it needs to do with your computer.  So, first of all, if you're on a wireless connection, get off it.  Use a direct cable instead.  Then reboot your router and modem by unplugging them both for a couple of minutes. That may be enough to solve the problem.

If not, look to see if you are suffering any packet loss (that is, the random loss of parts of the data that's being transmitted and received).  To do that, you can open Help >> About at the top of your screen, where you should see a packet loss number near the bottom of the summary.  If it's not there, type CTRL + Shift + 1 to open your Statistics Bar and scroll down to find the number.  It should be zero, but anything under 0.5% is OK.  Anything over that tell you that you are losing data somewhere.  If so, open Preferences >> Internet and increase the Maximum Bandwidth setting slightly to see if it helps.