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

[profiterole_reads]

Wow, I also thought the pocket problem was a recent issue.

[hudebnik]

I believe Bernadette (historical-costume vlogger, primarily interested in Victorian) did a show or two about pockets....

[gingicat]

I expect back to when dresses were expected to have a particular way to hang. Certainly I can't imagine diaphanous muslin gowns having pockets.

Celia Lake, who does some impressive research, has one of her characters use her bustle for storage, but that's a personal innovation for that character.

[ioplokon]

The Articles of Interest podcast has two(!) good episodes on pockets.

[flemmings]

Gwen Raverat, Darwin's granddaughter born in 1885, said in her memoir that the one great thing about Victorian and Edwardian clothes-which otherwise she loathed for their layers and scratchiness- was 'We had pockets!!'

[landofnowhere]

There's a bit of dialogue in Oscar Wilde's An Ideal Husband (1895):


Lord Goring: You have come here to sell me Robert Chiltern’s letter, haven’t you?

Mrs. Cheveley: To offer it to you on conditions. How did you guess that?

Lord Goring: Because you haven’t mentioned the subject. Have you got it with you?

Mrs. Cheveley: [Sitting down.] Oh, no! A well-made dress has no pockets.

[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.

[moon_custafer]

Yeah, but if Mrs. Cheveley said the sky was blue, I’d check.

[chez_jae]

Smash the Patriarchy! Starting with pockets!

[landofnowhere]

Indeed, she's lying about the letter (unclear if it's in a very discreet pocket or stuffed in a bodice), but I think we can conclude that there was Pockets Discourse at the time (and probably also that Mrs. Cheveley is wearing clothing that is form-fitting but not so form-fitting as to keep her from hiding a letter).

[med_cat]

Thank you for the variety of interesting links.

And yes, one does wonder re: pockets...