“Rarely does mainstream fashion listen to the dictates of feminists, but much like the tide of suffrage, the push for pockets could not be stopped.”
“Thanks, it has pockets!” – the universal call of a woman complimented on her outfit. It’s long been observed, to the point of cliche, that women’s clothing suffers a serious pocket deficiency. We’re far more likely to be offered clothes with no pockets, comically tiny pockets or, worst of all, fake pockets – which carry only false hope and crushed dreams.
So, what’s the deal with this strange sartorial sexism? How long have pockets even been around in the first place? To give a classic historian’s non-answer… it depends on your interpretation. Pockets either emerged in the seventeenth century or have been alongside us since the dawn of mankind.
Let’s go back to the beginning, here focusing primarily on European and western fashion history and” or “”, both meaning pouch. The oldest surviving prototype is a leather pouch sewn to the belt of Ötzi the Iceman, a naturally preserved mummy of a Chalcolithic man who was murdered in the Ötztal Alps between Austria and Italy some 5000 years ago.
