Portrait of actress Rosalind Russell making a phone call, wearing her famous gold chatelaine on her

Portrait of actress Rosalind Russell making a phone call, wearing her famous gold chatelaine on her wrist.
Ramage, F. (1958) Portrait of actress Rosalind Russell, 21 August 1958 [photograph]. Keystone / Getty Images. Available at: https://www.gettyimages.co.uk/detail/news-photo/portrait-of-actress-rosalind-russell-making-a-phone-call-news-photo/505808858 (Accessed: 12 July 2025).


One interesting early example of a kit is Chatelaines. Chatelaines were a unique functional and portable yet decorative item, derived from the French for "lady or mistress of the castle" (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, n.d.), which is linked to their similarity to the look of a hanging set of keys. To which chains with attached items, such as keys, miniature notebooks, scissors, and sewing accessories, were attached. Practical yet fashionable, so much so that they were

“often referred to as ‘equipages’, meaning ‘equipment’ (The Queen’s Chatelaine Bag, 2024).
They were very popular, and later they were described to be more decorative than useful, so much so that Punch Magazine even featured them in one of their cartoons titled "The Chatelaine: A Really Useful Present" showing a woman showing off a wholly impractical huge Chatelaine that has oversized items reaching down to the floor. However, when practical, these items resolved the seriously impractical issue of the lack of pockets that often affected women’s clothing during this period and the subsequent periods.