technically the appearance preset is a standalone independent file BUT
when you save it, it saves only the configuration of the person atom. Meanwhile:
- clothes
- hair items
- textures
- morphs
are only references in that configuration file. It's like saving a website page but just the html code, meanwhile the images from that page remain online.
So if the person has any of those things that are referenced from a .var file, they won't load anymore if you delete the .var file.
That will likely be the case with most looks you'll find in vars. You can check it manually by opening the .vap appearance files from Custom\Atom\Person\Appearance in notepad and looking for ":/". References will be like creator.addon.1:/some/file/name. You can save those references locally if you want to and have the model fully local but it's a bit of work