The gender politics of fashion - why pockets matter

Photographer: Cedric Nzaka

I remember the first item of clothing I carefully twisted around, back to front, side to side, turning it inside out, in search of the silky entrance to a crawl space or the resistance from a flap of fabric that would reveal a pouch, and then feeling triumphant. Ha! I had fulfilled one rite of passage that I’d always envied about the men who take it for granted.

One that required that I find at least one pocket before I could take a new coat or pair of pants home after a shopping trip. How could I spend serious money on an investment piece that didn’t have tailoring that considered small, but not insignificant, trimmings?

Mic’s former senior style writer, Rachel Lubitz, writes that, “Women’s clothes didn’t really have internal pockets for most of history, even while men’s started appearing in the late 1600s. According to London’s Victoria and Albert Museum, while pockets in menswear were often sewn directly into garments (like they still are today), women had to get crafty and wrap a sack with a string around their waists and tuck it way under their petticoats.”

Why do men get all the pockets, and if women get them, they’re invisible, shallow or just too small?

To finish reading the article where it was first published, visit Business Day Wanted.