One way fashion designers are listening to women? Pockets
Designers are finally paying attention to an issue women have been highlighting for decades.
It’s hard to do something radical on the red carpet these days. Not when stunt tactics and “naked” dresses abound. Yet actor Hunter Schafer managed it by turning up to the Cannes Film Festival this year wearing a dress with … pockets.
The iridescent gunmetal silk Armani Prive dress allowed Schafer to look insouciant and unencumbered on the red carpet, a mood that has long resonated with women.
It was a mood channelled this week by celebrities wearing local labels at the Logies, including Shelley Craft in a fire engine red custom Karen Gee dress and Georgie Parker in black feather-trimmed Velani.
For designer Karen Gee, pockets on the red carpet make sense.
“Pockets are not just for casual attire – they offer a unique and innovative element in our gowns, allowing women to carry essentials like phones or lipstick discreetly, without the need for a handbag,” she says.
“Moreover, the subtle addition of pockets gives wearers a confident stance when photographed, adding an unexpected and captivating visual element that sets our gowns apart from traditional designs.”
This sense of convenience and confidence is something Vogue Australia fashion assistant Isabella Mamas can relate to.
“On more than a number of occasions I have met another woman in a bathroom, complimented her outfit and been met with an ‘and it has pockets!’,”she says.
Women do indeed love pockets. In recent years they’ve been calling for more of them. Especially on social media platforms such as TikTok, Instagram and Reddit, and before that in columns such as one from 19th century activist Elizabeth Cady Stanton in 1899, titled A Plea for Pockets.
That said, there may be such a thing as too many pockets. Look at the return of divisive cargo pants on runways from Dries Van Noten to Proenza Schouler and Valentino.
Still, the fashion industry hasn’t always loved incorporating them into their designs. As Hannah Carlson, a Rhode Island School of Design professor and author of Pockets: An Intimate History of How We Keep Things Close, recently told The Wall Street Journal, while menswear was riddled with pockets by the 19th century, women – thought to be safely tucked away at home – weren’t expected to need them.
Even until into the 20th century, Carlson says, “there was this expectation that women’s clothes aren’t made for pockets”.
Other reasons for their absence are often ascribed to the outdated view that they “add bulk”, or “interrupt a line”, and they can add extra cost to making a garment.
Australian designer Anna Quan argues that pockets can actually enhance a design. If you’re looking for pockets that “flatter”, she suggests avoiding pockets that sit on the parts of the body you don’t want to accentuate.
“A small welt pocket on the upper body might be a nice feminine touch with corresponding jet pockets and flaps for function, texture and to break up the monotony of the garment,” she adds.
Charlotte Hicks, founder and creative director of Australian fashion label Esse, integrated pockets into her chic, minimalist and useful designs from the beginning. Her clients, she says, are always chuffed by them.
“It’s like a surprise and delight when our clients try something on. It feels so nice to see their faces light up (and say) ‘oh, there are pockets too!’.”
Hicks especially likes incorporating them into her evening wear, such as her best-selling column dress silhouette.
“Our classic signature column dress was one of the first dress styles Esse launched. Having the pockets in something so minimal gave the dress so much personality. With the pockets it can be day, cocktail or black tie,” she says.
“It’s an energy that’s hard to articulate, it creates a sense of ease and effortlessness. There is a quiet confidence in subverting something ‘dressed’ with the relaxed feel of a pocket.”
That Hicks is, as she puts it, a woman designing for other women, comes into play here. After all, Coco Chanel, who radically changed the way women dressed with her easy jersey pieces, was a big believer in pockets also.
Miuccia Prada, another designer with women’s wants, needs and desires in mind, is another purveyor of pockets such as in her autumn/winter ’23 collection, which included crisp, short-sleeved column dresses with generous pockets. That Prada was one of the few luxury brands to avoid a slowdown in reporting season this quarter is a sign that to “Mrs Prada”, as she is known in the industry, women-in-mind designs are resonating.
Function is something Australian fashion designer Lee Mathews, who started her brand 25 years ago, ascribes to as well. Pockets are something she has always given great consideration to.
“Pockets have always been essential to our designs, they convey the practical and effortless feel of our pieces,” she says.
“Our woman doesn’t necessarily want to sacrifice practicality in their day-to-day dressing, therefore we always aim to create pieces that are functional yet elevated – and pockets are key to this. However, when looking at our design process, pockets also allow us to emphasise sculptural elements and dimensional details within our collections.”
Mathews herself prefers to go hands-free – and handbag- free.
“For me personally, I’m always on the run and like to have my hands free so having sturdy pockets for my essentials is non-negotiable,” she says.
Pockets have appeared on other recent runways too – they were emphasised in Saint Laurent’s spring/summer ’24 show, which paid tribute to Yves Saint Laurent’s Saharienne jacket he introduced in 1967, and there were pockets in the elegant evening gowns and culottes at Carolina Herrera at New York Fashion Week last season.
Meanwhile, at Parisian brand Courreges’ most recent show a strategically placed front pocket was a nod to what Vogue Business described as female pleasure.
During a red carpet event at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York in June, actor Blake Lively (before the much-discussed It Ends With Us press tour) realised her floral Chanel suit had pockets and ditched her handbag. Her decision lit up TikTok in the process. As one person wrote of the clip posted to the social media platform of Lively throwing her handbag to a minder as she posed for the media wall: “The girls know the power of a pocket.”
Ultimately, it could be said pockets encapsulate the idea that women want clothes that make their lives feel a little easier – they want to be less encumbered, and also simply want a place to put their hands.
It’s worth noting too that many women now need to carry less stuff. Recently a fashion editor colleague attended an event without carrying a handbag at all, breezily noting she only needed her phone after all as it doubled as her wallet, and she had a lipstick and keys in her pocket. She looked almost unbearably unbothered.
As Isabella Mamas – who lists New Zealand brand Harris Tapper, Esse, P.Johnson and Prada as her ultimate go-tos for pocket placements – puts it: “I love a handbag; however, the ease of tossing keys and your phone into a pocket when running a quick errand or giving your hands a place to rest when mid-conversation tucked away in the pockets of a skirt, it’s simple moments like these that make me really, really love pockets.”.
