Small Pockets, Big Problems

It is a fact universally acknowledged that contemporary women’s clothes do not have pockets. Or, if they do, they are non-functional. This has been an issue for me for a while, now, brought to light in those moments when I find a fancy dress that actually has functional pockets. Recently, women have become even more vocal than usual about this sartorial prejudice due to the change in size of the iPhone 6, of all things.

Jezebel.com writer Tracy Moore, in her piece “Pocket Equality,” sums up the problem succinctly: “No pockets = sexism.” She goes on to explain that lack of functioning pockets in women’s clothing is “a longstanding problem” for all women, a “silent epidemic that has infantilized us all.”

Atlantic Monthly contributor Tanya Basu agrees with these claims in her article “The Gender Politics of Pockets,” explaining,

“A man can simply swipe up his keys and iPhone on the way to a rendezvous with co-workers and slip them into his pocket. A woman on the way to that same meeting has to either carry those items in her hand, or bring a whole purse with her--a definitive, silent sign that she is a woman.”

This debate, and my own consternation at how small my pockets are and how big my purses are getting, has led me to wonder a bit as to how this all happened. Did women’s clothing have pockets in the past? When the pockets disappear? Was there always pocket disparity?

A little bit of online research and some Twitter querying resulted in some interesting information. In the eighteenth century, women almost always had a pair of pockets on their persons--but these were not sewn into the gown she wore. Since women’s clothes of the time period often consisted of petticoats (skirts) with an under-petticoat and a shift underneath, the solution, instead, was to have women tie their pockets around their waists between the under petticoat and the petticoat.

A pair of 18th-century tie-on pockets.

Some of these pockets could be quite beautiful, despite being wholly hidden under the main skirt of the gown. The pockets were then accessible through slits in the petticoat.

All of this was still practical and fashionable for women of the time because of the fashion for large, voluminous skirts. During the Regency period, when nightgown-like dresses were all the rage, pockets disappeared, only to reappear during the nineteenth century, which took hooped skirts to whole new levels. In the nineteenth century, some women’s pockets were sewn in, while others were still tied on.

The final demise of the women’s pocket, it would seem, happened during the 20th century, specifically in the 1920s, when the flat, boyish figure for women came into fashion. Any lumps, bumps or voluminous skirts were unfashionable, making pockets a fashion no-no.

Men’s pockets, according to the V&A website at least, were always sewn into the lining of their waistcoats, breeches and/or jackets. The sewing in of pockets into such garments might, in fact, have been a result of the tightness of breeches and waistcoats in the eighteenth-century--there would be nowhere to hide a tied-on pocket in such an ensemble. Additionally, the required male dress consisted always of a coat out-of-doors, and eighteenth-century jackets were long and large--almost like a skirt. Presumably a gentleman only had a few of these, so perhaps it was all right to have the pockets sewn in.

Whatever the reason for the difference in men’s and women’s pockets in the past, the similarity between those tie-on pockets and modern purses is striking. Likewise, the few times that I have located articles of clothing for myself that had nice, big pockets, they were usually dresses with big, full skirts, so that the pockets and their contents are hidden. When fashion dictated a less bulky silhouette, such as during the Regency period, pockets were out of fashion as well, and women began using small bags or “reticules” to carry their most essential objects around with them.

Since then, we have managed to get rid of many socially-dictated requirements for women’s clothing. We don’t have to wear dresses and skirts or corsets or girdles, though we are all probably aware of a thousand other ways that the consumer clothing industry is against us. As Tanya Basu points out, “mid-range fashion is a male dominated business, driven not by form and function, but by design and how fabric best drapes the body.” There might be hope on the horizon, as some companies work on new and innovative ways to make pockets both functional and stylish but for now, I suppose I’ll have to continue to rely on my reticule.