Just how far back does this go!?

[conuly]

"There!" she said, "that's one of the things that's kept women helpless. It wasn't fashionable to have pockets, so men got one great advantage just in their clothes. Camp Fire Girls have pockets!"

This excerpt is from a book printed in 1927.

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Comments

[conuly]

I wonder how far back it goes that pockets were just little bags (poke + ette) and had only just transitioned to being belted against the skin rather than outside the clothing - there was a slit in the shirt or skirt or whatever so you could reach your pocket but it wasn't itself part of the clothing.

Which probably wouldn't work with muslin gowns, but wouldn't disrupt the hang of most garments because the weight is on the belt, not the clothing.

[movingfinger]

The little cloth handbag, which looks to have its ancestry in the under-dress pocket bag, is a ubiquitous feature in plates of women's Empire/Regency clothing and sticks around through at least the 1840s after that.