No ones custom skins show up and crashes when I press play most of the time

I used to be able to see skins though ever since I got the game like 5 years ago and I recently got back into playing the game but anyways I can do everything fine except for some reason none of the skins i put on are showing for me or my friends and I cant see everyone else's skins. So basically I'm Steve and all I see is Steve's and Alexis's and I don't know why but for me it makes the game more duller. Please tell me if there is a way to fix this or (if Mojang sees this) maybe you guys can fix it in your next update?. and for the crash part I have to restart Minecraft like 3 times before it stops crashing.
Thanks for your time
-Just another Minecraft user