THE NOT-SO-DEEP HISTORY OF POCKETS

Have you ever wondered how people carried keys, money, and other necessary small items? It was simple really—they would store it all in a wallet or just put the items in a bundle and hang it on their belts. The frozen mummy of Ötzi, an ancient man who lived approximately 5,300 years ago, was found in the Ötztal Alps in Tyrol at the end of the last century. And strapped to his belt was a similar bag. Of course, Ötzi was not carrying any keys or lighters, but the tools necessary for his survival and for hunting: a scraper, a piece of flint, a bone awl, and a dry mushroom.

Pictures of men with bundles on their belt can even be seen in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, and Judas in the New Testament received his thirty pieces of silver in one of those purses as well. In addition, people in different cultures found other creative solutions for carrying their belongings.

Southeast Asians—in China and Japan especially—used sleeves instead of pockets. At different points in history, the wide sleeves of eastern garments nearly touched the floor. To make them more useful, the sleeves were turned up and sewn on the inside, creating openings that allowed them to carry substantial weights. For example, a skilful lady-in-waiting could sneak an evening snack from the kitchen for her mistress and her lover consisting of a parcel of rice, a pack of biscuits, and a bottle of sake.

In south and central Asia, the land of camel trains, traders placed their bets on money belts. The belt was made from a long piece of cloth that was folded and sewn together with one end remaining open. The hollow portion would be stuffed with coins, and it was more difficult for a thief to get into it than to cut off a purse. However, the drawback was that the belt had to be untied to access the money.

The sporran, a medieval Scottish purse, had remained a constant and key part of the traditional Scottish Highland costume for special occasions. A hanging leather purse worn over the groin, sporrans can be decorated with tassels, silver metalwork, fur, and leather, as well as long horsehair.

A traditional Scottish kilt is not a skirt as much as a large, skilfully folded piece of wool, which when unfolded can be used as an overgarment or a blanket. So, of course it does not have any pockets. In the past, the Highlanders used their sporrans to carry dried oats along with pieces of dried deer meat for a snack during long walks. It goes without saying that a sporran would fit a small flask of whisky, enough to wet one’s throat. Later on, money and tobacco were also stored in sporrans.

If you find the Scottish tradition of wearing a pouch over one’s groin a little indecent, you should know that at a point in European history a ‘fly piece’ was used as an alternative for pockets. This detachable piece made it easy in order to urinate. ‘In this wide space, linen bags could be tied on the inside, between the shirt and the fly piece. This was a storage place for purses, apples, plums, pears, oranges, and other fruits,’ wrote Titian, a clothing historian during the reign of Charles V (1500–58). In fact the character Panurge, one of the main characters from Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais, takes an orange out of his fly piece.

Historically, the belt wallet has been the most common equivalent of a pocket—and it was not simply hanging off a belt on its own. From the thirteenth to the seventeenth centuries, many things were being attached to the belt, such as rosary beads (and a Book of Hours if one was particularly devout), bonbonnieres with sweets and daggers, as well as other weapons and precious items you didn’t want to leave at home. Some people even carried around aromatic sachets. Imagine how, with every step, all this stuff would jingle and bump against one’s hips, attracting the attention of thieves. Eventually, people realized that it would be much more convenient, not to mention safer, to hide some of the more precious things underneath the clothes.

Thus, people started hiding these hanging purses under their clothing. And in order to avoid unbuttoning one’s trousers every time you needed a coin, someone thought of making a slit or two in the trousers or jacket. This way, they could easily slip their hand into the hidden bag to access the small items.

Women wearing crinoline skirts with hoops or whale bones had it easier than men in those times. Their pockets could fit a lot of stuff without compromising the silhouette. For example, the heroine of Samuel Richardson’s novel (yes, the same so beloved by the mother of Pushkin’s Tatiana from Eugene Onegin) Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded runs away from her master taking only what fits into her pockets: ‘... a shirt, two shawls, two bonnets, and all the remaining money’.

Patch pockets first appeared on women’s clothing, specifically on aprons, late in the Middle Ages. These pockets were made by sewing a piece of cloth onto the garment on three sides, leaving the top for easy use and access.

Towards the end of the sixteenth century, another item necessary for many made an appearance—the tobacco box. Popularized in French high society by the scientist Jean Nicot de Villemain, tobacco quickly became popular not only as a remedy for many illnesses but also as a source of pleasure. People preferred to have their tobacco boxes close to hand and not look for it through a slit in their clothing.

Unfortunately, the name of the tailor who first thought of sewing a bag to the slit in clothes and thus inventing the modern pocket is unknown. One of the first known garments with pockets is a jacket belonging to Louis XIV. Although the Sun King could not stand tobacco and, therefore, did not own a tobacco box, a man could always find something to stuff in his pockets!

Along with noticeable pockets with a vertical opening, horizontal pockets also appeared on clothing. These were often covered by a flap that sometimes also had a button to help protect against thieves. It served not only a functional but also a decorative purpose. At one point, long jackets with horizontal pockets positioned so low that one would have to bend over to access the pocket became fashionable. This didn’t last long as convenience and comfort triumphed over fashion. However, fake pockets used for purely decorative purposes are still around.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, full skirts were replaced by much narrower ones and pockets practically disappeared from women’s clothing, and women had to use handbags instead. It is important to note that this took away not only a convenient feature but also one of the main gestures representing independence—placing hands in one’s pocket—from half of humankind. This pocket discrimination outraged the suffragettes, who fought not only for women’s right to vote but also for comfortable clothing. However, the first feminists lost the pocket battle as the pressures exerted by handbag manufacturers together with the torchbearers of patriarchal views were stronger. In the battle between the avid advocate of pockets Coco Chanel and Yves Saint Laurent, who thought that the point of women’s clothes was beauty and not comfort, Saint Laurent is winning so far. There are still fewer pockets on women’s clothing than on men’s, and women’s trousers, shorts, skirts, and dresses are often made without pockets.

Although pockets do not protect one from thievery (cut-purses quickly turned into pickpockets), they are still very convenient and useful. Pockets began to be used in a mass way at the beginning of the nineteenth century for all walks of society, but it was more important for common people to have their hands free than it was for the noblemen. And that thinking has carried over into our times. Nowadays, when a new item for daily use first appears, we immediately estimate if it would fit in our pocket. That’s why mobile phones are usually the size of a standard blazer or jeans’ pocket.