Women Used to Have Bigger Pockets Than Men

For about two hundred and fifty years, women had the bigger pockets. An eighteenth-century tie-on pocket was the size of a modern tablet, tied round the waist under the skirts, and it held your keys, your money, your sewing kit and your love letters. Then the silhouette changed in the 1790s, and the pocket did not fit underneath it. This episode traces the pocket from a pouch stitched to a Copper Age belt, through the century when men's clothes swallowed their pockets, to the Victorian fashion press arguing about where a woman's pocket should go, the suffragists who demanded pockets alongside the vote, and the 2018 study that measured eighty pairs of jeans and found women's front pockets forty-eight per cent shorter than men's. ------------- Find our Podcast on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music or where ever you listen to your podcasts. ------------- Watch our other videos: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLM3OqLHVo6eGkl86dsCJlWdQg9UNuNoWm https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLM3OqLHVo6eH5hSfUOdjVzGLZxfJOKbeG -------------- 💬 Which fashion icon should we explore next? Let me know what you think in the comments. 👍 Like, 🔔 subscribe, and click the bell so you never miss an icon. https://www.youtube.com/@TheFashionMemoir ✨ Remember: in fashion as in life, be fearless and fabulous — this is The Fashion Memoir.