Special hell

[ladyofastolat]

You know Shepherd Book's thing about the special hell reserved for people who talk in the theatre? Forget talking in the theatre! The special hell needs to be reserved for designers who think that fake pockets are a good idea.

Yes, I know I've ranted about this before, but fake pockets? FAKE POCKETS? WHY? I have been told that garments hang better and travel better if pockets are sewn up, so I can perhaps, and very grudgingly, accept that there might be a slight justification for sewing up pockets in garments destined for a life of stardom as a catwalk or catalogue model. But I'm talking about cheap, functional garments that will never look glamorous. I'm talking about garments that don't have pockets at all, merely useless little flaps - not even decorative ones, but boring, barely visible ones - that look as if they belong to pockets, but don't. WHY? WHY? If there was no pocket at all, perhaps I could learn to live with it; I do, after all, possess pocketless skirts and dresses. But why go to the effort of adding a useless little fake pocket opening unless you're doing it purely to deceive and enrage? Your eyes think there's a pocket there. Experience from other trousers tells you there'll be a pocket there. The useless little flap of fabric draws your fingers into it, only to make them come up short.

I have been told that men's trousers are immune from this plague. However, strangely, I have never yet heard a woman say, "Oh, I am SO overwhelmed today. I've got 4 pockets on my trousers, and it's such a lot to think about. If only two of them were fake!"

Give us trousers without pockets for those who want them. Give us trousers with pockets for those who want them. But don't give us trousers that say, "Hey, look at me! I've got 4 lovely pockets!" only to reveal once you've got them home that two of them are WICKED LIES!

And, yes, I KNOW that the moral of this story is "don't hastily buy trousers without checking the pocket situation," and "don't assume that, just because a pair of trousers appears to be UTTERLY IDENTICAL to the pair you bought from the same shop last year, it really IS utterly identical, and hasn't replaced perfectly functional pockets with fakes."

AND while I'm busy ranting about trousers... I'm five foot five and a bit, which is round about the average height for women in the UK. Something is very wrong in the world of women's trousers if trousers marked as "short" are 2 inches too long for me. Last year's pocket-rich well-nigh-identical-but-not pair were also "short" and exactly right. I suspect them of taking the fabric they saved from the pockets and sticking it on the hems.

Comments

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

I think it's women's clothing. Samuel R. Delany tells a story in one of his essays about the time his wife, Marilyn Hacker, got soaked by rain coming home, and put on a pair of his trousers since that was what they had clean, and was totally astonished by the roomy, comfortable pockets. Delany's point was how unaware we are of the cultural restrictions we live under.

For my part as a man, I need my large pockets because they're the only place I have to carry the things that women put in purses.

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

It could, of course, work the other way round: that women are only forced to reluctantly carry handbags around because their clothes don't provide them with sufficient pockets. I only carry a handbag for less than half of my trips outside, and that's usually because I've deliberately chosen one big enough to carry a Kindle and a paperback book. If I don't need a book, I prefer to go without my handbag and use pockets for what I need.

[songblaze.livejournal.com]

And being a woman who can't comfortably carry a purse is a real pain in the butt. I can't carry it on my left shoulder because I've injured that shoulder too often and it doesn't carry anything well. I can't wear it on my right shoulder straight down because it'll fall off because my right hand is resting on my service dog's harness, which lowers my shoulder slightly. I can't wear it cross-body because I've messed up my neck.

And I have no pockets of reasonable size to put anything into.

I've gotten used to sticking everything but my phone in my dog's harness. I'm dreading the day I have to get a new phone, because they've gotten far too big to fit in my pockets - my current phone's screen is a little over 3"! And I sure as hell don't want to put it in my dog's harness, because dogs do things like, oh, violently shake and knock into things.

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

That sounds horribly awkward. I hate carrying things on one shoulder - my shoulder and neck muscles keep threatening to go into cramp if I do so - but would be lost without cross-body bags. (Right shoulder to left hip. If, in a fit of distraction, I put it on the wrong way round, the entire world feels wrong.)

[songblaze.livejournal.com]

It's definitely annoying. If my dog's harness didn't have fairly large pouches that zip securely shut, I don't know what I'd do.

[melchar.livejournal.com]

Very much agreeing. My shoulders are messed up, so shoulder purses don't work. Waist purses worked for years, but then -shingles- and post herpetic neuralgia means no belts or belt purses any more. So it's pockets now, because even the stripped-down contents of a purse can't be 'cleavage carried'.