Just curious ... everything I've seen indicates what when a follower isn't actually following you, they take off all the armor you gave them - until they rejoin your service.

I'd like to, at some point when I'm bored, craft a set of armor for all of my "household staff".

If you give them a better melee weapon, they will always use it and keep it on them, but unless you are on a pc and have mods, as soon as you release them from following, they will re-equip their default armor.

I wish the weapons also applied to bows, but most have this annoying habit of using a default old hunting bow. Sometimes you get lucky and they will use a better bow you give them, but not often. That can also be changed on pc.

I believe that was changed in the latest patch. Not sure if it worked, though.

I'd give you the long-winded explanation, but will skip to the point: anything you give an NPC, with the exception of weapons that are of higher quality than their own, will be replaced by their default gear upon exiting the same cell the aforementioned NPC resides in.

Unfortunately it didn't work for me.