“Thanks! It Has Pockets!” - The History of Women’s Pockets.

“Thanks, it has pockets!” How many times have you complemented somebody on a dress or skirt to receive that reply? Why is it still such an important thing for us to mention? How and why are pockets an act of rebellion? 

If you have ever worn a piece of clothing designed for a woman, unless you are almost unbelievably lucky, you will have noticed the tiny-ness or indeed complete absence of pockets. I was trained as a seamstress and the job I am most often asked to do is to insert or extend pockets in women’s clothing. The unexpected glee with which people show off their pockets, pockets you can fit a whole hand or a phone in, shouldn’t be normal.

And yet it is.

Those of you who don’t have this problem may be wondering what I’m moaning about. Can’t you carry a bag? Or get somebody else to carry things for you? Sure I can. Both are extremely inconvenient. A bag is easier to remove things from and harder for the wearer to reach than a pocket. A small bag does not have space for even so much as a decent sized purse and larger bags than that hold up lines while we rifle through desperately looking for tickets, purse or phone all of which invariably slip to the bottom. My partner frequently offers to carry my purse or phone for me. Kind? Theoretically, yes. I know they do it from a place of kindness but what it actually does in practice is completely rob me of my autonomy. If somebody else, even somebody I trust and who cares about me, carries my money and my method of communication without them I am totally hopeless. I have no ability to exist anywhere that they are not. So why is it that in these (theoretically) enlightened days I’m still lucky if my phone fits into my pocket? 

The answer is complex and somewhat convoluted.  Christian Dior said “Men have pockets to keep things in, women for decoration.” And that, essentially, is the why. To pare it down to bare essentials the answer comes down to fashion, and what has dictated it over the last 200 odd years.

Pockets are, in the grand scheme of things, a relatively new invention. They first made an appearance sometime in the 1600s, and were essentially bags that could be slipped inside clothing. Both men and women wore these. With voluminous skirts (Elizabeth I and Marie Aintonette quite usefully bookend this period as fashion icons) pockets could be easily hidden and reasonably large. Everything you needed could be hidden within the layers of your petticoats. In the early 1800s empire line dresses came into fashion (think Pride and Prejudice or Bridgerton) there was a focus, in both men and women’s clothing on showing the natural shape of the body. With the reduction of petticoats and the slim line of the skirts, pockets became impossible to hide and therefore unfashionable. It is probably telling that one of the few places you can still find decently sized pockets for women is on the front of an apron. Handbags became the norm.

Rebellion.. I told you they were a symbol of rebellion. I promise I’m coming to it.

Despite the changing in skirt styles across the years- waists lowered and skirts began to hide the natural body shape again by 1830, and by 1860 a full skirt supported by a crinoline became the norm - yet pockets seemed to have vanished, they were not reintroduced in conjunction with this trend, instead handbags and other ways of carrying your possessions took their place. Until the introduction of the bicycle.

The bicycle is such an innocuous thing now that it is a little hard to understand just how much concern there was about them when they first became popular. Although other models had been developed before, the first bicycle we would recognise as a bicycle was invented in the 1880s. A woman suddenly had a level of freedom which she’d previously been denied. The ability to travel long distances under her own steam was not, for those who wished to keep their wives and daughters in the home, at all a good thing.

Side by side with bicycles came first wave feminism; Suffragettes and “Blue Stockings”- women who made the (at the time incredible) step of going to university - the first truly organised group who wanted women and men to have equal political standing. With the combination of these two forces the “Rational Dress” campaign came into being. “Rational Dress” was actually designed to make bicycling easier and some Rational Dress Suits were branded “Suffragette Suits” in their day. This campaign was utterly revolutionary. Unyielding fashion trends could be discarded, comfort and health were the order of the day. Not only did the movement suggest getting rid of corsets; something that really only happened (if you put a bit of stretch into the definition of corsets) in the 1960s, it also suggested trousers, and pockets. A rational dress suit had, for the first time in nearly 200 years, functional pockets. 

This caused uproar- the idea that a woman could stand with her hands in her pockets was itself a concern- how could you be modest and retiring with your hands in your pockets? The fact that you couldn’t, and that was the point, seems to have escaped the critics. In America some of these suits had pockets for pistols, but even in England, the idea that women could carry things secretly in their pockets was seen as a very real concern. The “New Woman” wore her pockets (sometimes up to 7 or 8) with pride. They were a visible, and very real, political statement about freedom, privacy and autonomy.

So why are we still here? Why am I still writing about pockets? Why am I still getting out my sewing machine and, over and over again making and inserting pockets? The easy answer is, of course, that it's a ploy to make us buy bags. And I don’t completely disagree with that analysis. However, I think it might be more than that. I think fashion, with the all-pervading aim to make feminine shapes visible, coupled with just a tiny bit of unspoken fear is still robbing us of pockets. They are well past due. Next time you find a piece of feminine clothing with decent pockets in it, stick your hands in and swagger for the suffragettes who came before you.

By Beth Whitaker for issue 2 of The Grey.