A Brief History of Women’s Wallets in Their Handbags

Everyone has used this mantra when they leave the house- “Keys, phone, wallet”! It’s old hat now, but just a hundred years ago the list only contained keys, phones as we know them didn’t exist yet, and if you were a woman you probably didn’t have a wallet as they were the province of men! Oh, you might have been allowed a coin purse to go buy a loaf of bread at the market with, but the main money went with the man! The male of the species has been carrying what we now would call a wallet for many centuries, but like so many things, it would take women more time to be able to adopt the practice.

And so, it’s not too surprising that the chic, stylish designer wallets for women that we proudly carry on our female persons today are a relatively new wrinkle! Even so, women have been managing to carry their small, useful items around on their person for almost as long as men have, it just took different forms. While today’s women’s wallets aren’t that different from a man’s wallet, mostly just more attractive, the precursors to our modern-day wallets were somewhat less than stylish!

Tie-On Pockets – Cloths have had pockets for nearly as long as clothes have, although the records are scant. What we do know is that pockets have only been sewn to the insides of our trousers for a few hundred years, and of course it was the men who got them first! Women also had pockets, but they had to tie theirs to the inside of their skirts. Tie-on pockets were a combination of today’s handbag and wallet, they held money, grooming supplies, and other useful little things. They did their job, but being hidden, they sure weren’t stylish!

Reticules – These dainty little purses or satchels began as a popular trend in the Regency period because the form-fitting empire waist dresses that were the style standard of the time didn’t accommodate bulky tie-on pockets beneath the skirt! These miniature purses were known as reticules and were carried on the wrist. They held the same objects as tie-on pockets, but less comfortably since they got in the way of your hand! The reticule would remain the standard up until the modern wallet became common for women. 

Women’s Wallets – And so, as usual, women had to wait a long time to eventually get what the men had! The first women’s wallets became available in the 1950s. The driver for this change was that women’s handbag styles had grown from tiny clutches to spacious purses that made room for carrying more items. Women, even housewives, were becoming more mobile, doing things like driving cars and going shopping so a wallet that resembled those carried by men simply made sense! Men didn’t seem to mind as long as dinner was ready when they came home from work!

The women of today not only hold jobs, they quite often wear the pants in the family! Even so, they still prefer to keep their wallets in their handbags, not in their back pockets, only a man would do something gauche like that!