No Pockets, No Posies, No Peace

It’s well worth a few cents. Especially when our health is involved.

Shirt designers and manufacturers are taking advantage of us. Big Time. And we migrate to the back of the closet like last season’s Jimmy Choos, and let them. This has to stop.
Here’s the situation.

Say I need to drive somewhere. It’s a fairly simple and straightforward route, so I jot the directions on a Post-it note. And I want the note to be readily available and reachable while driving. So in one deft move, with paper in right hand, pivoting at the elbow, the hand sweeps over the left side of my chest, grazing the shirt, to deposit the paper into my shirt pocket.

And what happens?

Nothing happens. Because there is no pocket. I have no place to put my piece of paper. And when I called Target about my defective shirt, I was told it was not a defect: not all shirts have pockets.

Honestly, I never noticed whether shirts had pockets or not before. I just assumed they always did. I don’t recall having this problem years ago. Am I just depending on shirt pockets more now, or did something change? Is this a conscious designer change? The latest business mandate to save a few cents per shirt? A result of the sequester?

Regardless, the problem is that when I go shopping for a shirt, I’m looking at the shirt color and pattern; the collar; the tailoring, and size and fit. I’m not thinking about pockets. It’s not until I wear the shirt for the first time and I go to place something in the pocket—which I would expect is important, particularly to most men—that I discover the loss.

And it is a loss. Shirt pockets are good for store receipts. Little scraps of paper. A pen. And often, a good place to put reading glasses if you are not ready to put them away quite yet, and want them readily accessible. My friend says he carries his work ID, cell phone, and calculator in his shirt pocket.

(I’m having second thoughts about the store receipts, though, lately. Used to be that receipts were little scraps of paper. But they are growing into literary tomes, containing coupons, disclaimers, product and sweepstakes information, surveys, websites to visit, loyalty card reward point summaries; not a pretty sight when stuffed into a shirt pocket.)

Maybe the shirt pocket wasn’t as important years ago because pants were bigger and baggier. With big, baggy pants, it’s easy to place and retrieve things from the pockets. But pants are tighter, more fitted now. It’s difficult to get your hand in today’s pants pockets. Especially when driving.

My son’s pants are so tight he can’t even put his wallet in his pocket. Now tell me, what is the purpose of pants if you can’t put your wallet in a pocket? Not to mention all the other things I tend to carry around: two sets of keys, a flashlight, glasses, comb, handkerchief, money, pens, Chapstick, store receipts, and the aforementioned scraps of paper: to do lists, ideas, shopping lists, clipped sections from newspapers.

So with baggy pants, you might make an argument that a shirt pocket is not necessary. (Or, better yet, what happened to cargo pants? They were one of the most practical articles of clothing ever created. I could carry newspapers, batteries, snacks, a Walkman, a camera, maps, a Clif Bar—all kinds of things—in cargo pants. But I suppose nowadays, with a smart phone, you don’t need most of these things. As my son says, no one wears cargo pants any more. But they are great for carrying tools. And how else do you easily transport music cassettes?)

But with almost-impossible-to-use-when-sitting pants pockets, it becomes more critical that shirts must have pockets.

Athenian historian Thucydides (c.460-400 B.C.) expressed my desire in his book The History of the Peloponnesian War. “The great wish of some is to avenge themselves on some particular enemy, the great wish of others to save their own pocket.” Yes, but I want to save not only my own pocket, but the pockets of all.

So why don’t some shirts have pockets? Looking online, you can find some, but not many, debates about shirt pockets. Check out GQ.com (Glenn O’Brien, The Style Guy, Dress shirts without front pockets), Simplebits.com (Dan Cederholm, August 30, 2004, Ode to the Breast Pocket), styleforum.net (Are shirts without pockets acceptable as work shirts?), or Trendkin.com (Jared Noble, May 14, 2013, Shirts: Why do they have pockets?). There is an opinion that more shirts today lack shirt pockets to allow manufacturers to save money. One blog comment noted, “Dress shirts without a breast pocket are best used as rags to dust furniture or clean the lawnmower.”

But the more compelling argument against pockets is that shirts simply have a sleeker, cleaner, classier look without a pocket. A pocket makes the shirt less balanced. Not a good thing, design-wise. And they definitely do not work if you are wearing braces. And if when you hear “braces,” you think orthodontics, then you surely are not style-conscious enough to desire pocket-less shirts.

I hear all that talk about style. I get it. People have differing opinions. But to help people like me avoid buying a shirt only to find out later that it lacks a pocket, at least there should be a warning on the shirt package in the store:

“WARNING: SHIRT HAS NO POCKET.”

(And don’t get me started on another fashion topic: V-neck sweaters. You wear a sweater because you are cold. If you are cold, why would you want to expose the top of your chest? When I wear a sweater, I want as much as my body covered as possible. If you are going to wear a V-neck sweater, you might as well pair it with open toe snow boots for the season.)

(And excuse me for continuing to interrupt this essay on pockets, but I have one more thing to rail against that is related to the lack of fabric: Underwear. In order to get to work on time, I typically get dressed prior to sunrise, in the dark. And to don underwear, it is critical to know inside from outside, and front from back. Feeling for the little tag is crucial for orienting the item in space before pulling it on. Except that those little tags are apparently going the way of the shirt pocket. And without that tag, I now sometimes clothe myself with underwear inside out and/or upside down, requiring a re-dressing. Getting rid of that tag is not progress.)

But back to shirts pockets.

A shirt needs to serve a function. It covers your skin, for modesty. It provides warmth. You can wipe things on it. Some people use them to advertise products. And shirt pockets may even prevent illness. In the nursery rhyme “Ring Around the Rosie,” the second line talks about a “pocket full of posies.” There was a thought that if you breathe bad air, you may get sick. But by keeping flowers—a “posy” is a small bouquet—in your pocket, you are breathing more aromatic, clean air. You can cram your posy in the pockets of today’s pants. Or you can place your posy in a shirt pocket. Where would you rather put your posy?

But most importantly, a shirt needs to be able to house the minutia that we collect in our daily travels; literally, the little scraps of our lives that we don’t know what to do with immediately, that we desire to keep close to our hearts.

Shouldn’t we have quick access to those trinkets and words close to our hearts? Are we going to allow shirt manufacturers to deny us this?

We need shirt pockets. But then again, I thought we needed batteries also. I was in Home Depot a year ago, and they had a great sale on a pack of 50 batteries. I brought them home and told my son, if you need any batteries, don’t buy them, I have plenty.

“Dad, what would I need batteries for? No one uses batteries anymore.” I had to stop and think for a minute, but he was mostly right. A year later, I still have 40 batteries left.

But despite the battery incident, there is a real need for shirt pockets. Fashion be damned!

(And no, I would not carry a spare battery in a shirt pocket. I have some sense of style. And despite all attempts to thwart me, I make every effort to assure my underwear is on straight.)

-End-