What is the best way to equip gear and weapons to 3d character?

Hi Guys,

On the start I must admit that I'm new to unity and game dev but I've 10+ years of professional experience in IT and did quite a lot of programming during this time.

I'm making fps with some survival mechanics. I already have inventory system done. Character can equip backpack, armor, hat or helmet etc Payer can access this stuff in UI and equip it, replace or drop/unequip.

What I want to do now is make changes visible on player character and I wonder what is the best way to go about doing it. For now when player put item in slot my script instates gameobject form prefab attached to item and sets it as a child of transform object representing part of character skeleton (backpack is child of one of spine bones, helmet is child of head bone etc...) for that to work each item must store script with position and rotation that must be applied to new gameobject so it will be placed i right place on character model. After that it works fine, gear is following character movement and animations. But it does not seem to be the best way to do it, also this will not work for stuff like jackets that I'm planning to add later.

I would like to hear some opinions on that subject, maybe somebody did something similar?