Seditious Pockets
Sexist & Political!
Dangerous Coats by Sharon Owens
Someone clever once said
Women were not allowed pockets
In case they carried leaflets
To spread sedition
Which means unrest
To you & me
A grandiose word
For commonsense
Fairness
Kindness
Equality
So ladies, start sewing
Dangerous coats
Made of pockets & sedition
I went looking for information about the history of women’s clothing and pockets in particular, and I did not come away emptyhanded. The following is a whistlestop, skating the surface of history, tour of pockets and their history!
There’s a famous quote from Christian Dior, from 1954, which says “Men have pockets to keep things in, women for decoration” and despite this being 70 years ago, this still seems to hold true. Worse, we seem to have exaggerated this so that now even pockets in children’s clothing holds to this standard. My boys, right from when they were babies, have had bigger pockets in their clothing than I have. It mystifies me still why men’s pyjamas have pockets!
This history of women’s pockets goes back further than Dior, and whilst the quote above demonstrates a misogynist point of view, the issue is also a political one.
In the 1700’s (and presumably before this too) pockets were made separately to any clothing – for men and women. They were made to tie around the waist and increasingly, by this point in history, were worn beneath clothing to prevent them being taken by ‘cut-purse’ thieves. The outer layers would have slits sewn in to give the wearer easy access to the pocket, which at this time were spacious to say the least. It was not uncommon for women to be carrying all manner of items in these pockets: sewing kits, snuffboxes, combs, keys, spectacles, watches, scent bottles and even food. All this made reasonably straightforward by women’s fashion at the time being to wear voluminous skirts with yards and yards of fabric including several petticoats to maintain the width of the skirts. In the middle of this century, the fashions began to change and at the same time the French Revolution was taking hold. Women’s fashion favoured a narrower silhouette, with far less fabric and fewer underskirts, leaving less room for bulky pockets underneath. This led to the invention of the ‘reticule’ or handbag, which women have had a love-hate relationship with ever since! The French Revolution saw the possibility of women having the means to conceal items becoming dangerous to those with power. At the time it seems women often carried, not only written material that was subversive to the state, but also weapons, hidden in their skirts.
Towards the end of the 1800’s the Rational Dress Society was formed to try and counteract the extremes of women’s fashion. Founded in London they were protesting against clothing which ‘deforms the figure, impedes movement of the body or in any way tends to injure the health’. They produced a list of 5 attributes of “perfect” clothing for women, and despite pockets not being mentioned on the list, they were given a prominence not seen previously.
It is interesting to note that the Rational Dress Society believed that dress reform needed to come before any other movement towards independence for women could be achieved, including rights and equality. In their publication the Rational Dress Gazette, it states “Financial independence is the basis of woman’s as well as man’s liberty. That she cannot gain whilst weakening and obstructing her body by a dress ‘a la mode’”
In 1899 a New York Times article makes a light-hearted and yet enlightening statement, “As we become more civilized, we need more pockets. No pocketless people has ever been great since pockets were invented, and the female sex cannot rival us whole it is pocketless.”
Pockets made the men nervous, especially those whose way of life depended on keeping women dependent on them. Of course, this is still true today!
The new pockets, brought about by the Rational Dress movement, arguably represented a massive shift not only in sartorial terms, but also because it paved the way for other crucial freedoms for women: financial independence, privacy, mobility and sexuality.
It’s a fight we’re still in today, for pockets, and all they represent to our freedoms.
There is so much information out there about pockets and revolution, here are a few places to begin reading:
https://www.vox.com/2016/9/19/12865560/politics-of-pockets-suffragettes-women
https://www.ncgsjournal.com/issue101/myers.html
https://www.vam.ac.uk/articles/womens-tie-pockets This V&A article goes into more of the nuances around pockets vs handbags – I only came across it after writing this post so I may edit at a later date!
I also came across this reddit thread which had me laughing out loud in the coffee shop… Try and sing along!
https://www.reddit.com/r/WitchesVsPatriarchy/comments/ffkawp/pockets_of_sedition/