Women's Pockets Weren't Always a Complete Disgrace | A Brief History: England, 15th c - 21st c

Enter to win a copy of "The Pocket: A Hidden History of Women's Lives" from Yale University Press:

Disclosure: This video is not sponsored or funded in any part by Yale University Press. Two items of free product are provided only to the giveaway winners. Video production and research material expenses are covered in full through my usual video production budget.

SOURCES:
--Braun, Melanie; Costigliolo, Luca; North, Susan; Thornton, Claire; Tiramani, Jenny. '17th Century Men's Dress Patterns: 1600-1630'. 2016. Thames & Hudson, London. Print.
--Burman, Barbara and Fennetaux, Ariane. "The Pocket: A Hidden History of Women's Lives." 2019, Yale University Press. Print.
--Tiramani, Jenny; Costigliolo, Luca; Passot, Sébastien; Lucas, Armelle; Pietsch, Johannes. "Patterns of Fashion 5: The content, cut, construction and context of bodies, stays, hoops and rumps c. 1595 - 1795". London, 2018. Print.

Special thanks to Melissa P for sharing her extant pocket database with me; to @AbbyCox for peer review and supplemental extant pocket footage; to @pinsenttailoring for supplemental waistcoat pocket footage.

FOOTNOTES & CITATIONS:
Due to character count limit, these are listed at:

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0:00 Introduction
1:10 The (very very slow) Development of Pockets
3:16 The Infinite Styles and Shapes of the Tie-On Pocket
4:49 A Deduction Exercise: How Pockets Reveal People
6:44 The Golden Age of Pocketry: 18th Century Pocket Hoops
8:43 No, Pockets Were Not Displaced by Handbags (Regency Edition)
10:17 Sewn-in Pockets and the Rise of Pocket Inequality
13:47 No, Pockets Were Not Displaced by Handbags (21st Century Edition).
16:17 A Very Special Giveaway From Yale University Press :)

[alenemarie]

The fact that that women were so passionate about pockets throughout history brings me immense joy.

[teresas.]

My daughter complained her clothes don't have pockets at age four. This was after she put a rock in her ear, because she didn't have any pockets, to save for later. We made sure she had pockets after that. Even in her cosplay.

[mrspaigebaldwin]

Sitting in a wedding ceremony a little over a year ago I will never forget the collective gasp that coursed through the women in the audience when the bride reached in a pocket IN HER WEDDING GOWN to pull out items such as a quill pen and box with the groom's ring. We all wanted a do-over for our own gowns.

[banjoele]

My three year old daughter has become very insistent on pockets these days. She experienced her first fake pocket. The betrayel was palpable.

[emilyhetchler]

If I can't fit a pair of sewing shears, a book, a water bottle, a journal, a bag of Doritos, and a live chicken in my pockets then WHAT is the POINT

[EmpressCosplay]

I'll never forget my friend in a Rococo dress pulling out an entire bottle of wine out of their pocket hoops.

[lauralee]

I saw a picture today of a female celebrity holding a phone, keys, coffee, wallet and probably something else in her hand which was bent to accommodate this amount of stuff with the caption “this is what decades of pocket abuse has done to women, we’ve evolved this level of dexterity”

[Rohansleepover]

I will NEVER forget Michael Kors telling a Project Runway contestant off for daring to have pockets in the pants they made and then adding "All the women I know cut off the pockets"

It never fails to make me seethe with rage

[TheNerdyArcher]

To the historical ladies carrying live chickens in their pockets: majestic.True icons.

[catgirl]

I remember one of my teachers showing a wedding picture and we liked her dress. She said yeah it even has pockets. Every Single Girl in the room gasped and we were all in aww we thought it was so cool.

[gwenc]

I once went with a friend to her wedding dress fitting. I complemented one of the dresses as being very sleek, and the designer pretty much jumped out from behind her skirt and say: "AND IT HAS POCKETS!"
I don't know why a wedding dress need pockets (as I hadn't worn one myself) but I sure love that she added them

[sonja]

"The pinnacle of insulting blasphemy that is the existence of the fake pocket" is the best sentence I have ever heard 😆🙌🏻

[AssignedCryptid]

My first patternmaking class at fashion school a few years back, one of the first things our predominantly feminine class asked the teacher was how to add pockets to literally everything. Upon seeing the multiple pages of various pocket styles and options in the textbook everyone got very excited for the glorious possibilities for pocket supremacy.

[lauramiller]

Meanwhile my daughter’s baby clothes have pockets. They are teeny tiny but they exist more frequently and in better proportion to the size of the garment than many of my clothes.

[MoonRovr]

Bernadette having passive-aggressive rants about historically accurate wardrobes and garments gives me life.

[mooncake]

I’m not sure if it’s a western thing, but having lived in Japan for a few years, I noticed that almost all women’s garments have pockets. Big pockets! All my dresses and skirts have pockets. The inside lining of jackets also have big pockets. Big enough to fit an ipad. The clothing is very functional. I do miss finding modern clothing with pockets now that I’m back in North America.

[stupidbluebrry]

Bernadette: "Do with information what you will"
Me: Grabs pitchfork

[really-quite-exhausted]

There's a nursery rhymes that begins "Lucy Locket lost her pocket..." and I never used to understand how on earth someone could lose an entire sewn-in pocket, but when you consider the historical context of tie-on pockets, it makes an awful lot more sense...

[ms_ch]

When I showed my friends at school i sew a pocket inside my coat and they went NUTS
Same thing happened when a random lady said her skirt had pockets and she put her arm almost to the elbow inside and people around started screaming in excitement
That's what they took from us: HAPPINESS

[skylark]

I still remember reading Harry Potter for the first time and being extremely puzzled as to how he fit his wand in his pocket. I remember looking at my jeans and being like “I don’t think I could fit a *pencil* in these”. Then a friend of mine pulled a replica wand out of his pocket. I was both amazed and infuriated