What Was in a Gilded Age Lady’s Handbag?
Not a mobile phone, emergency snack, or water bottle in sight.
A Gilded Age lady’s handbag was a tiny thing, often so dainty that one wonders how it held anything at all.
It might be a beaded reticule dangling from the wrist, a velvet drawstring bag, a fine leather purse, or, by the turn of the twentieth century, a more recognisable handbag. It could be embroidered with flowers, trimmed with tassels or made from shimmering metal mesh. It was part of an outfit, certainly, but also a small travelling office, a sewing basket, a beauty case, and a social survival kit.
The details depended on the occasion and the woman. A lady attending the opera needed rather different provisions from one making afternoon calls. Yet some items turn up again and again.
So, if we could peer into the handbag of a fashionable woman in 1895, what might we find?
First, a Small Bag with a Long History
Before handbags became a regular part of fashionable dress, women had pockets.
These were not sewn into dresses as we might expect today. From the seventeenth century until the end of the nineteenth century, many women wore detachable tie-on pockets beneath their skirts. They were practical, generous in size and carried through slits in the petticoat. The Victoria and Albert Museum explains that they remained in use even as bags and purses became more fashionable.
