Although we no longer set up home with a lifetime of packed linen and crockery, is there still room for the idea of inheriting those essentials – and more? Journalist Kate Finnigan investigates.

No self-respecting modern woman has a trousseau these days, right? Perhaps some of us are too modern and self-respecting to even recognize the word. In which case, a reminder. Trousseau is the term used for the collection of clothes, bed linens, tablecloths and other domestic belongings a bride-to-be would traditionally gather before her marriage, as she prepared to leave her parents’ household to create a new one with her husband. The trousseau was an essential starter kit for a newly married woman embarking on a career as CEO of The Family.

Today, some of us might roll our eyes at the prospect of a woman’s life being entirely confined to the domestic. Or just feel very thankful that most of us now have the freedom and opportunity to find self-worth beyond our collections of towels and bed sheets – although, personally, I’ve nothing against towels and bed sheets. In fact, I get a big kick out of them and enjoy gazing at their satisfying stacks in the closet. Is that weird?

But I don’t think the trousseau is an entirely outdated phenomenon, either. What I love about the idea of it is that it links the old and the new; the families we’re born into and the families we become. Or, the people we were and the people we will be. There’s something comforting about it and it feels right, honoring the past and the future.

It strikes me that most of us probably do carry around a trousseau of sorts, we just wouldn’t call it that. In some cases, it will be actual inherited stuff – a patchwork quilt that used to belong to your mom, that she passed onto you when you moved into your apartment and your daughter now has on her bed. Or, in my case, the ivory- and gold-trimmed china tea set that belonged to my maternal grandmother, which currently resides on the top shelf of my kitchen cabinet. I take it down when I’m having friends over for tea. Not only does it provide us with a sense of occasion and ritual, making the event a little bit more memorable (who doesn’t love a proper tea set, including tea pot, sugar bowl and milk jug?), it reminds me of drinking endless cups of tea with my granny.

Sarah, a friend of mine, inherited her grandmother’s engagement ring. “I wear it all the time,” she says, “So I get that link to the past whenever I look down at my hand, which is basically all the time.”

Your own unofficial trousseau might be made up of a painting from your childhood home or a photo album. It might be your dad’s old bottle opener or records borrowed (okay, stolen) from your brother’s 1990s vinyl collection.

Last year, I interviewed a costume designer with Indian heritage. Her mom is a great cook, but when Nita was a teenager she hated Indian food. All she wanted to eat – like most teenagers – was pasta and sauce or burgers and chips. Over the years that changed, and she found herself wanting to make the meals her mom made. When she was 30, her mom gave her a handwritten book of all her recipes – most of which had been handed down from her own mother. A great present and one that we could definitely include in a ‘modern trousseau’.

It might be even more of an abstract concept, though. Maybe it’s the beauty tips your mom passed on – something as simple as the ritual of cleansing your face every evening or brushing your hair 50 times every night. “I remember watching my mum getting ready to go out when I was little,” says Harriet, a fashion stylist. “She always sprayed her perfume in front of her and then stepped into it. She said it was better than spraying it directly onto your pulse points, like most people do. I have no idea if that’s right or true, but that’s exactly how I apply perfume still today.”

Perhaps the trousseau isn’t as outmoded an idea as we might have thought. Maybe we’ve been traveling with them all along. They’ve just transformed into something a little less practical. Maybe it is, indeed, an old school chest of beautiful bed linen (honestly, I wouldn’t say no to that). But all it really has to be is something rich in memories and love.

Kate Finnigan writes about fashion, design and culture for publications including the “Financial Times”, “HTSI”, “The Observer” and “The Gentlewoman”.