Let’s start with an experiment. Yes, I’m talking to you, dear reader. Put your hands in your pockets. We can’t see it, but we’ll hazard a guess: if you wear clothes bought in men’s stores, you can do this without any problem; However, when you wear clothes that are considered women’s clothing, things get a little more complicated. Unless you wear pants, your pockets will be small, fake, skimpy, or none at all. If you’re lucky, you might be able to slip your hands loosely into her dress. In the next sections we will try to answer the question: why do men’s clothes have so many pockets, and ours have so few? Spoiler: The answer is not easy. It took Hannah Carlson a whole book to get to her. It’s called Pockets: An Intimate History of How We Keep Things Close (Algonquin Books) and it was just published. She dares to give a short answer for S Fashion: This is due to a) the different developments of men’s and women’s clothing and b) beliefs about who needs bags. We’ve already warned that this problem is just as deep as the bags we crave. This issue is not new, it predates the pro-pocket activism we see on social media today and is heralded with hashtags like #PocketInequality, #HerPocketsSuck, #wewantpockets and #givemepocketsorgivemedeath. In fact, it existed long before the internet. By 1880, Carlson says, Harper’s Bazaar and the New York Times were already reporting that women “began to mobilize vigorously so that they could have and enjoy bags.”
Who doesn’t find it funny that we walk lightly with our hands in them? Who stops us from keeping our cell phones indoors? Who wants us without secrets? Conspirators, calm down: There is no global conspiracy of powerful masters deciding that women don’t make money. The responsibility for this imbalance is shared by the inertia of a history that grants men privileges, the separation between the functional or the beautiful (where we lose by having to choose) and the market: a garment without pockets is cheaper than one with them. And part of the responsibility also lies with us, the women, because we don’t want bags at any price. Everything about these openings is intense.
The bags are discreet, but they preserve (or rather preserve) a complex history that concentrates sociology, sewing, politics, economics and… secrets. The author of Pockets points out something curious: “Unlike zippers, buttons and belt loops, pockets do not help us put on or take off our clothes or adjust our clothes.” That is, we don’t need them, but we want them. Although more and more women’s designs include pockets, and a look through Zara confirms this, they are never a given. The same cannot be said for clothing considered masculine, which has had pockets since the 16th century, both in made-to-measure and industrial production. However, finding a pocket in a skirt is like finding a crumpled bill in a pocket.
Actress Jodie Foster in a 1979 picture taken in Los Angeles. Photo: Getty
The story of bags is the story of our relationship with the objects we care about and how they touch or don’t touch our skin. Also the need to hide them. Man has always needed tools to get by in his daily life and wanted to have them close by. Internal pockets, or pockets attached to clothing as we know them, are relatively new: for most of history, women carried necessities, which were small and often private, on belts or in small bags or bags that hung under dresses via discreet openings. In the past, they had few possessions of their own, making it one of their few places of privacy. This invention was widespread for a long time until the bags were stolen in the 18th century, which meant that they had to be sewn onto clothing. Each social class did this in its own way, with more or less fine fabrics and more or less ornamentation, but all agreed that this was where the most private possessions were kept, and in many cases the only ones. One of Jack the Ripper’s canonical victims, Annie Chapman, was found with her bag, in which she had kept an envelope, pills, a small comb, and a piece of thick muslin, which she intended to pawn or sell. There were already pockets visible that were separate from the dress, but she couldn’t afford them, nor should she risk losing what little she had. A few years earlier, Carlson says, the writer Emily Dickinson claimed the right to keep what she needed, in her case a pen, in her clothes. She managed to sew a flat zippered pocket into her dress where she could store her pencil and papers where she wrote down her ideas throughout the day. In the afternoon, sitting at her small desk, she turned them into poems. She, the author sums up gracefully, “had a room of her own and a bag she could rely on.” According to the allusions, Virginia Woolf’s relationship with her bags is dramatic: she kept the stones in them that would help her River Ouse sinking.
Keeping items within easy reach has always depended on the design of clothing. The fashion for large volumes made it easier to have pockets sewn into the waistband, but with the move toward more stylized silhouettes, such as the empire cut, the problem became more complicated. It was at the beginning of the 20th century when ridiculous things became popular: mini containers (Jacquemus didn’t invent anything with micro bags) in which women could carry their belongings that were… ridiculous. It was the men who owned the money and “did things.” They were the ones who deserved the bags. The women had nothing to keep. The 20th century came and VOGUE wrote in 1916 that bags were “a new decorative element in design.” And the word “new” drives fashion crazy, which always has to look askance at the times in order to stay a little ahead of them. And Coco Chanel appeared, her hands in the pockets of her pants and jacket. A not very sophisticated search on Google returns images of her with a confident gesture. Their pockets may be small, but never artificial. World War II accelerated the introduction of items into men’s clothing and military uniforms and added pockets to women’s clothing. And there was no going back: something so seemingly simple made life easier. Wartime shortages led to the creation of the Utility Cloth Scheme, a program that outlined how to sew and clothe without wasting material; It stipulated that there should be no more than two pockets per dress. After the war, the dichotomy between the beautiful and the practical was still present. Christian Dior himself wrote in 1954 that “men had bags as something practical and women as decoration.” The path started by Chanel had no turning back and Dior’s own student, Yves Saint Laurent, was clear about it: his world was different and the world was already different. To be clear, there was the safari jacket full of pockets and the tuxedo. Balenciaga didn’t have to borrow anything from the men’s wardrobe: he sewed bags however and where he wanted because he knew how to do it. And then came the democratization of jeans, cargo pants and other items of clothing that had pockets because they came from men’s wardrobes. In party and formal wear, they have been a rarity to date, as we can see on every red carpet. The second wave of feminism is here and the urgency to not carry more than what is necessary and to convey confidence. A photo of Jackie Kennedy with a white minidress and his hands in his pockets shows us that this gesture is not intended for protesters, but for everyone, even the most bourgeois.
Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel in 1929, wore a jacket with pockets. Photo: Getty
Let’s return to the need to keep our possessions close. Another question arises here (there are more questions than answers on this topic): Doesn’t the bag help? Finally, it allows us to carry the items we need and many are compatible with having our hands in our pockets. The difference between a bag and a bag is how close it is to the body. The pocket, Carlson says in this podcast, “is internal and secret and your pocket can be stolen.” This scientist recounts in “Pockets” that in 1954, Bonnie Cashin designed a skirt with a pocket sewn as if it were one Bag. “To steal the purse, you have to steal the girl,” the promotional material said. The examples from the Bottega Veneta Spring/Summer 2024 season would be difficult to steal due to their large size. The models walked the runway in Milá last week with their hands in their pockets and those exquisite bags. At the same time, men (hello Jacob Elordi) are encouraged to wear it.
According to Carlson, it’s not about the bag versus bag battle, but rather about how the industry assumes we’ll carry bags. In “Pockets”, superbly documented and full of well-crafted anecdotes, the author tells a case known in the myths of fashion history and whose protagonist is Diana Vreeland. In 1934, the fashion editor of Harper’s Bazaar came up with the idea of devoting an entire issue of the magazine to bags because she viewed handbags as ancient (sic). She, wearing Chanel, had lipsticks, cigarettes and money in her jacket pockets and thought she deserved to be able to do it “like a man, for heaven’s sake.” She had to abandon the idea because it was dangerous: handbag advertisers might withdraw their support from the magazine.
Many years have passed since Vreeland’s bravery and we continue to demand more pockets in women’s clothing. Just writing that sentence seems ridiculous (like pre-pocket bags) and demodé. It is a demand that responds to several very simple desires: we want to be able to walk easily, to rest our hands in them, we want to have everything we need close by. That men can always do it and women can only sometimes is the axis around which this great little activism revolves. The pocket-friendly, quiet but persistent militancy has been mobilized for decades. Nowadays social media amplifies this and if the suffragettes had known about it they might have used it. Carlson devotes many paragraphs to them in his book, as they become the standard bearers of this equality between men and women. These women asked for something very simple: to walk without anything hanging on their arm. Anti-suffrage propaganda used this claim to portray them as unattractive and masculinized women. A book of time. A Sketch of the Fair Sex in Politics (1898) showed them with their hands in the pockets of what they called “suffragette skirts,” with side pockets like men’s clothing. I wish we had them in stores today.
For Carlson, “the core of the inequality is that only one gender needs functional clothing because only one gender is expected to wear it and actually demand it.” If we are supposed to be beautiful and calm, why do we need objects in our clothing have and keep? As we emphasize, the responsibility also lies with us, the women ourselves. We want bags, yes, but ones that fit us well and don’t make our figures look bigger. Girls, and here is an example of how complex this issue is, do not worry about whether their clothes are stylish or not and their clothes have fewer pockets than boys. This means that by the age of ten, many ask to carry a bag, which puts additional strain on their bodies. Children don’t need it. There are unconscious privileges that one enjoys from childhood. Designer Moisés Nieto claims that the reason for the absence of pockets in women’s clothing is “a question of aesthetic tradition.” Historically, women’s clothing has always been associated with stitching and flattering the silhouette. “Pockets on tight-fitting garments are often unflattering because the fabric and seams are significantly larger.” He admits that some customers ask him to remove these pockets, even though he usually adds pockets to most dresses. They are neither less modern nor less free women; Sometimes the reason is simpler: we look better without them and that’s also confidence. The paradox is thus fulfilled.
Penélope Cruz wears a Chanel dress with pockets at the 2022 Oscars. Photo: Getty
Trust is the word that characterizes every text or conversation that involves bags. Nieto explains that when he sees a woman with this attitude, he sees someone with character who is comfortable. It is important to convey that the garments are designed for everyday use and help us in our daily lives.” Mercedes and Elena Zubizarreta, the founders of Zubi, add that for them the bags “provide a posture aid, it seems strange, but often you don’t know what to do with your hands, and the pockets are the joker.” It is the protection of those who are shy or pose poorly.” They emphasize that making a garment with pockets is more expensive and complex is like: “A poorly placed pocket will ruin a pair of trousers or a jacket.” The sisters tell an anecdote that makes it clear that this is a sensitive topic: “When we were little, we took a trip to London and went with one of the guards the typical photo in the Tower of London. It was December and we were traveling with Barbour and our hands in our pockets. At the moment of posing, the security guard grabbed our wrists and pulled our hands out because “it’s rude to keep your hands in your pockets, you have to wear gloves!” Contemporary women’s clothing does have pockets, and more and more of them, but many remain small and fake. This shows us that in many cases aesthetics still takes precedence over functionality. Another reason for the shortage of women’s clothing is economic: the clothes we wear are mass-produced and every centimeter of fabric and every minute of sewing incurs additional costs. The other is technical, and Zubi confirms this, because a bag must be well made so as not to deform the silhouette.
Mandy Fletcher is a woman who, tired of not being able to find women’s clothing with pockets, founded Pockets for Women, an online store that curates clothing from different brands. Pockets presents the results of an interesting study in which the pockets of 80 pairs of men’s and women’s jeans from twenty major brands in the United States were measured in 2018. It concluded that women’s average bag was 48% shorter and 6.5% flatter than men’s, their hands couldn’t fit in it and more than half couldn’t store wallets or cell phones. The conclusion writes itself. The items we need tend to be reduced: we already carry our wallets on our phones and perhaps soon our keys too; However, we still need objects to live. In addition, we have the right to a place to store our hair ties and lip balm.
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“It has pockets!” It is an expression that is usually accompanied by exclamation points. There is both joy and surprise in it. Even centuries after bags were invented, women still miss their presence. Hannah Carlson provides a feminist interpretation of this absence in women’s clothing. She is clear: “You don’t need the unequal distribution of pockets in gendered clothing to see that all kinds of traditions support patriarchy,” she says. And he explains to this magazine: “The fashion industry doesn’t even bother to make excuses.” The truth is that Penélope Cruz appeared on the Oscars red carpet last year in a Chanel Haute Couture dress with big pockets and with that made headlines. There will come a day when this gesture will no longer be a headline and saying “It has pockets!” when looking at a dress will no longer be a sign of victory. It still hasn’t arrived.