My favorite pair of pants (not jeans) were lightweight cargos with pockets that sat next to the calf. Perfect for flying as I could reach into the pockets when seated. More awkward to reach when walking, for sure. But they could hold a piece of chewing gum, my EarPlanes and my phone. The pockets were big enough to hold a small book. Did the pants look weird? Yes, but who cares if they are handy and comfortable.
The comfort thing was their downfall, or mine. They would stretch out while seated and not shrink when standing. The last straw was having to hold them up with one hand while holding carry-on luggage with the other as I exited the plane.I would have elasticized the wasteband if there was a good way to do it.
Though if the problem was that the length of the legs had stretched, that wouldn’t help; but in that case nothing you did to the waistband would have helped either.
Yeah - I cannot imagine sticking a phone (or anything else, really) in a back pocket.
I tend to go around without a purse at all these days; my wallet is on a bungee and lives in my front left pocket, attached to a belt loop. My phone in the front right pocket. I suspect a pickpocket would have a much harder time getting at either without my noticing.
Sadly, even when women’s clothing HAS pockets, they are often basted shut by the manufacturers. So you really cannot tell how large the pocket is, in the store. I once bought two new pairs of dress pants; un-basted one, found I could almost put my phone in if I laid it sideways and had it sticking out a bit, and returned the other pair in disgust.
Big Purse has lost its mind also. I’ve used a specific model from a specific manufacturer for years. The first two, the main zipper broke after a couple years, but I loved it so much otherwise that I simply replaced it. It was, in all ways other than the zipper problem, the Perfect Purse. Recently, after a few years of largely going purse-less (see above), I decided to switch back - and they’ve eliminated the original design, and made a smaller version with almost the same name, and fewer / smaller pockets.
To be fair, the advantage of a purse is that everything you need is right there, no matter what clothing you have. If you are just using pockets, you need to make sure they are loaded up each morning with whatever you need. Much harder to forget your wallet, if it lives in a purse.
My purseless days are largely enabled because I wear the same pair of jeans or whatever for several days in a row. If I went to an office, I’d likely be a full time purse-user again.
I went to dinner with a woman I know, and when we got back to my car (in a large parking garage), I took my wallet out of my pocket, sat in the driver’s seat, and set the wallet on the center console. She asked me why I did that. I said that when we got to the gate to leave the garage, and I had to pay the parking fee, it would be hard to fish the wallet out of my pocket (especially with the seat belt on).
She said she’d never thought of that. She carried her wallet in her purse. When she drove out of a parking garage, it was simple enough to just grab her purse, put it on her lap, and grab her wallet.
Some cashiers are also taught to give change by laying the bills on the customer’s hand, then the coins on top of that. Works fine if you can just slide the coins off your hand and into your purse; but clumsy if you need to put them in your pocket. That’s becoming less of a problem as cash payments are getting more rare.
So, yeah, pockets are great sometimes, but they aren’t a perfect solution to carrying stuff around.
I wear the same jeans for a week, so I don’t load the pockets every day. On Sunday night, I empty the pockets onto my dresser and put everything in the pockets Monday morning.
Both my wife and I have lost a significant amount of weight over the last decade as a result of which she has some old shorts that are now too large for her, but now large enough for me. I put one on a couple weeks ago and discovered that, while it had all four pockets I am accustomed to, they were all considerably smaller.
Before you do anything, you should probably search, “SHOULD I add pockets to a dress”. I believe I mentioned in the linked thread that many female items would look terrible with pockets. I mentioned that none of the dresses that Cheryl Scott (ABC 7 weather at ten) wears have pockets and would look terrible with them.
In the movie, “Gunpowder Milkshake”, there is a scene depicting the high school aged Sam in a diner. She is wearing a cute sweater but, seemingly patched on by a bad tailor with terrible eyesight, there is a pocket that looks absolutely horrible. It is a perfect example of what I mean.
They’re usually the folks who got thrown out of the Boy Scouts for insufficient ability to not cry while camping without Mommy. With very few exceptions they’re not veterans of anything.
Actually, I just gave my old multi pocketed men’s vest away to a friend because it fits him much better than my girly figure. From ScotteVest: they are fantastic.
Sure! And any of the “travel”, “fly-fishing”, “photojournalist”, or “UN humanitarian worker” myriad-pocket-style vests, and you have some color options, are (usually! I do not want to underestimate some stylistic genius) going to be a better look than “military surplus”, even if you would not wear any of them to the opera.
What makes it truly infuriating is that clothing manufacturers invest money in all the seaming and piece fitting costs to create the full appearance of pockets. The difference between that, and a few more millimetres of fabric to actually HAVE a pocket is literally pennies!
They have paid all of the cost for the cutting, piecing, and sewing, but are too freaking cheapass to spring for literally 3 more inches of cheap lining fabric.
It’s not like there has been a substantial saving passed on to the consumer, zero saving had.
Well, the story they feed us is that the pockets make us look unattractive and lumpy. I say the skin tight clothing makes us look unattractive and lumpy and I’d rather wear something loose-fitting with pockets.