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Hello, it's Avery. Let me just break the fourth wall here for a second and just say thank you so much for listening to Articles of Interest. I really can't tell you how much it means to me. This is... I mean, I make this by myself. I also am like the engineer and the one in Pro Tools. It just takes so long for me to make all these shows and...

I strive to make articles of interest something that is worth your time and your attention is just the most valuable gift you could give. So thank you very much for letting articles of interest be a part of your life.

So I'm going to do something this episode that I haven't done yet, which is a rerun, but it's got a really good reason. This is the episode that I did way back in the first season of Articles of Interest in 2018 called Pockets. And man, it is like the story that launched a thousand conversations. There's so much to say about Pockets, so much so that

There is going to be a part two after the rerun of a conversation that I had with author Hannah Carlson, who was in the original episode and her book entirely about pockets is out now. And we were in conversation live at the New York Public Library. And I've condensed that and added a little bit at the end for you. Enjoy.

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I had never worn a dress before. I'm sure it was like slightly graceless as like all the things I did at the time seemed to have been. I met Piers on our very first week in college. It must have been day one or two. It was really early. We went to a super PC liberal arts school and so our freshman mixer was a cross-dressing dance.

Which is such an outdated term now, but whatever. That's what it was called. I think all they told us was you should wear clothes of the opposite gender. They probably said it in a way that's slightly more, you know, literate in the differences between gender and biological sex than what I just said. It was a strange way to make first impressions on each other. Not because we were scared of wearing dresses or backwards baseball caps or whatever we wore that night.

It was because for many of us, we had to borrow clothes from the other people in our hall. It was weirdly intimate. Piers and I, complete strangers,

swapped outfits. You're tall, and I'm tall, and I think that you're probably the only person in the hall, if not the building, whose clothes would have fit me. I remember I loaned Piers a pink, swirly-patterned mini dress from the 60s that I had bought from a thrift store, and I had no idea if he would take care of it or even return it. But Piers tried it on. It looked great. And he went to check himself out in the bathroom down the hall. And here's what happened next. I immediately locked myself out of my room. And I was like, okay.

Oh no, my keys are in my room because I didn't have anywhere to put them. The dress had no pockets. Piers' brand new roommate let him back in, but then he went to sleep. So Piers wanted to make sure he didn't make that mistake again. He couldn't lose his keys at the party. And I believe I just clutched my keys in my hand and thought about it really hard all night, which sounds crazy. Da-da-da-da-da-da-da, da-da-da-da-da-da-da.

articles of interest a show about what we wear and so maybe the ideas about clothing you can attach our ideas about class an idea of home to a piece of cloth any fool can wear clothes but if you ain't got the attitude and style to carry it off man you're just a clothes horse

Women's wear is littered with fake pockets that don't open or shallow pockets that could hardly hold a paperclip. If there are pockets at all, they are just smaller and they fit less than men's pockets do. And you don't have to take my word for it.

Here we are going to the police supply store. I wanted to find an example of a uniform that had pockets and compare those made for men and those for women. This is the shop that provides the uniforms for the Oakland police. And when I asked the store manager if I could look at the men's and women's uniforms, this is what he told me. Are you ready for this? I'm ready for this. The women wear the men's.

Really? Because the pockets are too small on the women's. Wait, really? That's why? Yeah, that is why. But there is a women's that they make. But I don't carry them. Well, I've got some over here. But traditionally, they use the men's because the pockets are bigger and they can put things in them. Where the women's are smaller, which I can show you, and they won't fit. That's fascinating. Now you have something to blog about. I'll give you something to blog about.

Man's great evolutionary advantage is the creation of tools. The problem is we're not marsupials. We need to carry them somehow. And this idea of who has access to the tools they need, who can walk through the world comfortably and securely, this is what we are talking about when we talk about pockets. Pockets speak to this possibility

question of preparedness and your ability to move in public and to be confident. It's really difficult to get around if you don't have what you need. And it's about, I think, mobility and movement in public. Hannah Carlson lectures at the Rhode Island School of Design, where she teaches classes in material culture, fashion history, and fashion theory. And she is working on a book about pockets. If the formal question for me is, what difference does it make? What's the difference between a pocket and a bag?

And I think the key difference is that the pocket is internal and it's secret. A bag can be stolen. A bag can be lost. And then that's it. You don't have your things anymore. With the pocket inside, you don't have to think about it.

You forget about it, but you still have stuff in there. It is seen as this territory of your own that connects you to the objects you carry. Those objects become part of you. Case in point, Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson was called a walking calculator for all of the miniature tools and devices he carried. Miniature scales, drawing instruments, a thermometer, a surveying compass, a level, a globe—

And he was able to jot down his observations from his daily wanderings.

Historically, men have been the ones with these tools for public life on their person at all times. In Hannah Carlson's research, she found a lot of accounts of women complaining about this. One woman noted that her son was better equipped than she or her daughter. And she concludes that a boy's pockets are his certificate of empire. All through life, he will carry the scepter of dominion by the right of his pockets. I mean, so this is great language. I loved it.

I mean, it's playful, it's funny, but there's some seriousness here about what later costume historians call real social handicap. Pockets are just a perfect metaphor for privilege, not only because they are so easily taken for granted by the people who have them, but also because, like the categories of race and gender themselves, pocket disparity is a construct. It's made up. There's no reason for women's pockets to be so small.

Back in the 18th century, women's pockets were quite large. You could hold quite a lot in them. There are accounts of women putting food in it to eat later. They would have writing tools, maybe a small diary, sewing implements. They could carry quite a lot, especially if you had two. This is Clarissa Esquera. Yes, I'm Clarissa Esquera. I am the Associate Curator of Costume and Textiles at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

And where are we now? We are in a storage area at the museum for our department. And so we have everything laid out on a table, currently covered with tissue, but I will reveal them one at a time. This is a little hard to picture on the radio, but indulge me for a second. Pockets used to be a completely separate garment.

They were really more like pouches. Pockets being suspended from the waist has a really long history, actually. It started for both men and women in the medieval era. They were suspended from their waist over their clothes. And then sometime in the late 17th century...

Men started having clothes made where pockets were incorporated. They were in their coats, their waistcoats and in their breeches. And women's pockets remained separate from the rest of clothing. Oh, kind of like a fanny pack. No, no, no, no. I think, um, okay, think of the pockets separately.

on the inside of your jeans, right? Those teardrop-shaped pouches. They were kind of like that, but they were just on their own, like separate from pants, and they were attached to a string. And these would be tied around the waist. Yes. And in some cases, these pouches were really big, like the length of your forearm. And these detachable pockets were then worn under women's dresses. So even though a lot of old dresses look like they have pockets, they really just have cut slits in them. Women.

Women had slits made in the petticoats and dresses, and they could access their pockets by going through those slits. You could reach through your dress to get to your detachable pocket pouches. Does that make sense? Sure, why not? Would you like to see them? Yes. Okay. So I thought we would kind of start with the more simpler ones and then kind of go into the more complicated ones because they were really functional, but also they were an opportunity for...

Splendor. I'm actually just going to cut to the complicated, expensive, fancy pockets because they are indeed very splendid. Oh, wow. So these were very, very finely embroidered. This one is a silk pocket and it's lightly quilted. And then it is covered with this beautiful floral chain stitch embroidery. So these are all tiny, tiny little chain stitches. Oh, my God. It's really fine. And there's a pair of them that match.

And this is something that she just wore, and only she and the woman who helped her get dressed and perhaps her lover saw. Pockets were almost like lingerie, especially the beautiful, expensive ones. The pockets were this intimate thing, close to the body, holding your most precious items safe under the layers of your ginormous, fluffy dress.

And then came the French Revolution. The French Revolution happened. Which, in many ways, was a revolution against excess. These dresses that were made with voluminous silk skirts were no longer fashionable. And what was fashionable were muslin dresses that clung to the body. So when you get to the 1800s and the empire style where the waist is pretty much gone...

You know, think of Jane Austen movies. You have the columnar silhouette. A silhouette like a straight Greek column. And some of these columnar dresses have slits for pockets, but a lot of them are too body-hugging to accommodate extra bulge. There's no space for pockets, and so suddenly women begin to carry little purses.

And there's lots of ridicule about women having to lose their pockets and having to carry these silly bags. And at the time, they called them reticules because they were so small. Like ridiculous? Like ridiculous. Reticules were teeny, teeny, tiny little drawstring pouches, elaborately beaded and decorated. They held maybe a few coins and some keys, but like, that's it.

And you could hang the loops of the drawstring around your wrist, which was another reason why it was considered ridiculous. You have to remember to carry it. It's easy to lose. People can steal it. That's the formal difference. But that's kind of the price you pay for a fashion. The little bags were in style. And I mean, you can see why. If you look at them, they're beautiful. They're very fancy, beautiful things, shell-shaped or made of silk and gorgeous things. They're to be seen...

They're not particularly capacious. This is dress historian Barbara Berman. The reticule becomes a kind of temporary fashionista thing. And so you get journalists writing in the

and second decades of the 19th century about pocketists and anti-pocketists. The fashion press made pockets seem like they were for housewives, for women who needed to lug around sewing kits and bits of food they were saving for later. The anti-pocketists were going out dancing and gambling. They have these beautiful little reticules and they're much more fashionable. They don't need to carry keys and

In the 19th century, fashion magazines were saying it was a liberating thing for women not to have pockets, to be free from tasks.

Reticules, which hardly held anything, were kind of like long nails that don't let you use your hands as much or stiletto heels that don't let you walk as far. There's that luxury in not moving too much or doing too much and just looking really good. And it's always been an ongoing debate if that is empowering or not.

But it's not like the reticule completely killed the tie-on pocket. They were still around. A woman could perfectly well have a pair of pockets and also a reticule for when she wanted to be at show air. They coexist, and this kind of pocket clearly outlives the reticule. You find them in use in the 17th century, going right through to the 20th century.

So why don't we have these anymore if it wasn't the columnar silhouette? Search me. You know, if you can come up with a good answer, it's very difficult to pinpoint it. They fade from use. They become old fashioned.

More dresses start to have integrated pockets, but they're often very small. Not always, but they are often very small and very difficult to access. The women's wear that had integrated pockets tended to be feminized versions of men's wear. Made by men. They're made by tailors, not dressmakers.

And out of habit, the tailors would be putting in proper fitted-in pockets, so to speak, like men's pockets. So they're because they were using male tailoring techniques. Basically, if an outfit had an inset pocket, it was a uselessly proportioned version of a man's pattern. The pocket is seen to be a monopoly of the male sex eventually. It's...

Pockets and trousers are one. And as women's fashions change, pockets can be lost. And as men's fashions change, pockets can be gained. And they were. Again and again and again, pockets were getting added and added and added over the course of decades. And by the early 20th century...

It was just getting ridiculous. Copious amounts of pockets. I can't even, like, you have your ticket pocket for the train, you have your coin pocket, watch pocket, breast pocket. Then you have all the pockets in your waistcoat and then in your trousers. It's really interesting, and women have one purse. Both gendered extremes were starting to get terrible. Because pockets had proliferated, they had become completely worthless. You...

You couldn't find anything. You stop on the street, you have to pat yourself down to remember where you've left your wallet. The average man of 1944 had 24 pockets. Way too many.

at least according to Bernard Rudolfsky. He was kind of enraged by the way that pockets kept sort of popping up. Bernard Rudolfsky was an architect, a modernist architect, and modernists were really into sleek, simple buildings that were absolutely functional with no excess. He was this modernist who wanted to make clothing perfectly rational. And he found it ironic that all his fellow rational modernist architects

We're all wearing suits. He wanted to, I think, shake up this confidence that we have about the suit and suggest, no, no, it is not modern in any way. It has all sorts of old ideas and beliefs. And this pocket that was once functional is now no longer functional because we have so many. And to prove his point, God love him, Rudolfsky puts on an exhibit at the New York Museum of Modern Art in 1944. And it was called, Are Clothes Modern? Yes.

Our clothes modern was the question. The answer was no. The central piece in Rudofsky's MoMA exhibit was this big, multi-layered infographic chart. It looked like an x-ray of a man's three-piece suit. We have color-coded the pockets in his shirt, in his vest, in his coat and overcoat.

and you see this wonderful sort of chaotic overlay of 24 pockets. The average suit had 24 pockets and 70 buttons. Rudofsky was really passionate about how completely silly and redundant this was. The guy is a wonderful nutball. But Rudofsky was really onto something, because he wasn't only about abolishing suits. He thought that at the root of this insane pocket conundrum was a much larger problem.

Which is about generally what we consider clothing to be. Clothing hanging on hangers to him looked like people's sort of dead skins. He wanted to be able to show that you could travel to a friend's house and they would have clothes for you because clothing wouldn't be individual to the body.

Universal size, universal clothing, unisex clothing. Universal clothing, according to Rudofsky, would be more like a toga or apparel that embraced the nature of cloth itself, something that would drape and move naturally. You know, he hated the idea that through clothes we could show ideas about status and gender that were unfair. He hated the expense, the waste. And so he wanted this, you know, really simple cloth that

And of course, the images that he showed, his ideas for this new utopian future, are very simple clothing that have no pockets. A world with no pockets at all. And no bags. You might know the perfect world when you arrive there by its pocketlessness. My college friend of peers got really into researching and reading about pockets long after his debacle with my dress. There's this whole strain of thought which suggests that if the world were perfect...

If society were perfect, if we lived in a utopia of some kind,

where you didn't have to worry about your physical safety, you didn't have to worry about somebody robbing your house. You wouldn't need pockets in order to carry money, in order to carry keys. And certainly in the course of time, we have come to hold fewer and fewer things in our pockets. All those little devices, the Jeffersons, are contained in a single phone that we carry externally on our body. And the pocket really is this sort of knowledge box

envelope, this compartment. But the phone stays adjacent to us, removed, encased in a bag or pocket. I think there's just too much doubt at the moment about whether that utopia can ever work. And perhaps one day we will have all of our tools implanted in our skull or embedded on an accessory which everyone will be able to access in the same way. And then when we get there, pockets will seem just as ancient as Rudofsky thought them to be.

Already, it seems so antiquated that clothes are needlessly gendered in the way they are. Because we should all have access to the tools we need, or at least a place to put our hands. After the break, so much more to say about pockets. Just checking the recording here.

This is so cool that you all are here at like 2 p.m. on a Friday. This is such a treat. We were like, well, we'll just talk to each other and like maybe no one will show up. And this is like a real... Maybe someone, you know, the procrastinating grad student who really can't figure it out is going to show up. Hannah Carlson, one of the original guests in the episode,

wrote a whole book with even more to say about pockets and it finally came out. It just came out. So we have to celebrate. Here is an updated conversation with Hannah Carlson about her new book, Pockets: An Intimate History of How We Keep Things Close. We had this conversation live at the New York Public Library. So I hope you enjoy. Yeah. Okay. Getting down to business. Any given garment has buttons, it has zippers, it has all these different features and fixtures. What makes pockets different?

It took an embarrassingly long time for me to figure that out. I suddenly thought, "Oh, right!"

They're this weird, odd man out. We have zippers and belt loops and ties, and they all help us adjust the fit of your clothes, take them on, take them off. Pockets are amazing because they're the only functional element of dress that have nothing to do with fit. It is like this, I say, wily hitchhiker who just like snuck on and stuck to us. It's not just functional. They're just this, they're this funny add-on.

So one of the interesting things about pockets is that they say a lot about our relationship to each other. And how did the placement of the pocket, how did that change the way that people related to each other in society? Well, I think the fascinating thing about a pocket is it's not a purse and the two are really related. The word pocket means little bag. But what that allowed was this notion of private space. You could have private space in public.

hid about a man's body were all these secret spaces, and that was threatening. You can't tell what's in pockets, and they marked this change from these rough warriors who could show you what they had. They had weapons at their side, swords and daggers, and the shift to this notion of secrecy becoming important coincides with, I think, the insertion of pockets. - So you brought up the idea of weapons and the idea of danger, which is actually a huge part of pocket history.

It is so crazy. I think that was one of the things that surprised me most, was that the pocket was this sensational sort of surprise. It was threatening and dangerous. And the first handguns that could be small were pocket pistols that had a wheel lock mechanism. So instead of a gun that was a couple of feet long, that you had to stop, light a taper, and light it,

and shoot it for the first time you had a gun that you could actually carry in your pocket and use. The press was really up in arms when the first assassination

of a world leader by handgun occurred because the Prince of Orange shows up and says, "I'm going to hand you a letter." And it looks as though that's what he's doing to the king. And instead, he brings out his pocket pistol and assassinates him. And leaders, world leaders like Queen Elizabeth, were very anxious about this. And they tried to write all these sumptuary laws which said you shouldn't carry any small-scale weapon on your person.

Well, it really changes the notion of valor. Absolutely, because you didn't have to show your valor. It could be hidden. You could be the most schlumpy guy and not at all dangerous or threatening. And what do you have, this secret weapon that you're carrying inside your pockets? And I think that's what freaked people out and what made it sort of sensational. And so, and another aspect of danger as it relates to the pocket is the idea of like the pickpocket. You say a pickpocket is different than a cut purse. How so?

So for centuries, people have bags tied around their waists and they might dangle from your side. And the cut purse was somebody who had to get close to you and cut the purse. The pickpocket was called a pocket diver. A pickpocket is someone who is much more devious and had to have many more skills. When you're talking about like the new sort of intimacy that's now required to

rob someone when they have a pocket. What you're saying is that pockets allow sort of an extension of your personhood. Like who you are is augmented by having pockets. And so how do we see pockets as a sign of sort of autonomy and dominion play out amongst people who were escaping slavery? So enslavers would use ads,

runaway advertisements and in them there's lots of description of clothing and in those descriptions every once in a while there's some mention of pockets. And so that's so amazing that it says it in that like wanted reward this is what he's wearing it had pockets like they it's noted enough that it's in the description. Well and so that also suggests that when we see clothing today it's just like part of the picture you wouldn't even notice their

presence, although women notice their absence. But it's something that in the 18th century imagination, it's a detail that counts.

But it looks as though also some runaways added pockets and pocket flaps and cuffs in order to make that suit not only more functional, but to look like you could pass as a gentleman. So if you're going to show up and be a free black person in Charleston, you could pass yourself off as free. By having pockets. By looking like you had a suit that had the parts it needed. Right, by having pockets. Tell me about the life and times of the pose of putting your hands in your pockets. Because this used to be

Kind of controversial, right? Absolutely. So in etiquette, your hand is way too close to the erogenous zone. Pockets, as the poet Harold Nemiroff said, are dark spaces over and around erogenous zones. And you bet, you bet there were moms and teachers who sewed up pockets because they did not want boys' hands anywhere near their pockets. So

Throughout the 18th and 19th century, get your hands out of your pockets is a refrain that we're familiar with because it was rude. Yeah, so that has long sort of been the association with hands in pockets. How did Walt Whitman take all these meanings and subvert them?

I think he didn't want to look like he had a silver fork in his mouth. He wants to look like nature's aristocrat, like earthy but elegant. He wants to change it into something that we could all approach. And so in his, so this means like in his author's illustration for Leaves of Grass, he's got his hands in his pockets. I mean, I feel like that sort of changed author photos forever. Yeah.

Well, Emerson, who I put right next to Whitman, says, oh my God, I'm going to read this book even though the author's portrait looks so vulgar, even though this is really sort of very dubious. And I think when we look at Victorians now, we can't help but think they look so staid and while Whitman looks so familiar. And it's because we all do that now. Right, right, right.

And so like now if you, you know, on YouTube, they're all manner of videos of like what's in my bag, even in old in magazines are like, oh, what so and so can't live without what they carry with them all the time. And as you write in your book, we've just always been obsessed with this idea of what are people like?

carrying with them. So a two-part question: One, why are we so obsessed with like what's in my bag? And two, how do we see the contents of a pocket different than the contents of a bag? Okay, part one. I think we're obsessed because pocketed collections are something you're not supposed to show.

They're not a kind of collection like a library in your home that you're willing to put on show. It's supposed to reveal something authentically about you that maybe you didn't want to reveal. And I think that the reason that Lincoln's pockets, the contents of his pockets are so often visited at the Library of Congress is because we hope to get some

Sense of who he actually was some little hint This is what he put in his pockets when he thought nobody was looking What he thought he needed the night that he went to the theater and was assassinated. So what were in his pockets? um

you know, normal sort of everyday things except the few couple things like he had the couple of good reviews from his last presidential campaign and the idea that this sort of wonderful figure who everybody reveres also needed a little like, yeah, we loved you. You know, I think maybe is useful to hear. Okay, but then, you know, how are the contents of a pocket

treat it differently than the contents of a purse or a bag. I have heard people say, "Well, women have handbags. Why the fuss?" And a 1999 Supreme Court case, Wyoming versus Houghton, suggested that there was actually something to worry about. So, in this case, the question was,

Do you have the same Fourth Amendment rights if you are carrying a handbag or if you have a wallet in your suit? Do you have protection from unreasonable search and seizure? And the answer is, in three states of the Union, you do not. If you are living in Ohio, Wyoming, or Montana, you have, it seems, far less protection of your privacy. So in this specific case, the police stopped a car. The driver was under suspicion. The driver can be searched.

Suspicionless passengers in the car cannot be searched, but a car can be searched, so the trunk can be searched in any container.

In this case, the woman who was a suspicionless passenger happened to be carrying a purse and that purse was searched and that was the issue, should that have been allowed. And so she, so this was in Wyoming and she brought the case to court. She brought the case because they did actually find drug paraphernalia in her purse, but she was suspicionless and there was no reason for the police to search her purse. And Anton Scalia said, that purse is like any other container in the car.

Breyer said, you know, I think we should understand that the purse is a woman's special property. It's like an outer kind of clothing. We should protect that just like we protect the person. But then, like, didn't the... So it ultimately came down to, like, where the purse was held, right? The purse was tossed in the back seat, and Breyer said, well, if she had been holding it in her lap, I think I would have dissented. But, you know, I'll go with precedent. And so this means, like, the design of the purse matters if it's something that you, like...

hold to you versus toss in the car. In certain cases, design matters that much that you cannot be searched when you are suspicionless when you are wearing pockets. But your purse in certain conditions could be searched. So why do purses persist today?

People also love purses. Bags are great. I mean, you know, for suffragists, the purse was a badge of servitude because you always had to lug it around. But many other people love purses. And did I already tell this story? There's Diana Vreeland arrived at Harper's Bazaar and she said, I want to have a whole issue devoted to pockets. I want to suggest how great pockets can be and how designers should use them. And I want to get rid of my bloody old can bag. I hate it.

We need to devote issues to pockets.

the editor whom she accosted with this decision ran to the editor-in-chief who ran back to Diana Vreeland to say, "You are out of your mind. We have to sell magazines and we have to sell purses, purse sponsors, and you cannot do this." Well, I mean, it should be said that like bags are a massive source of income, especially since the 1980s and the rise of multinational conglomerates like LVMH.

The markup on a bag is magnitudes of order larger than clothes. And also in an e-commerce era, they require no sizing. They're the easiest movable piece of clout that a brand can sell. Every brand depends on it. It is the lifeblood of the fashion industry. Absolutely. So is it a conspiracy? I don't want to go there.

There are too many conspiracies out there in this day and age, so I don't want to go there. And so, you know, we talked about why men and women historically had different sized pockets. Tell me about some of the female designers who really had to fight to change that. They're American sportswear designers starting in the 30s and 40s say, okay, we've had it. We want practical clothing for women on the go, and we're going to make big,

obvious pockets. And designers like Claire McArdle, she won this contest for Harper's Bazaar to make a cheap house dress and sticks this huge quilted pocket right at the hip. And she wanted to make something vibrant, but also useful. And then folks like Bonnie Cashin, who are making more expensive garments, also want to equip women for

all of their travels. And so what I love about these designers is that they're using pockets, they're adding them as useful decoration, and they're suggesting that you can put a pocket and it will not change the silhouette. For so long, women say, oh, it has to be slimming. A pocket will bulge you out. If I put pockets in that dress, it's going to bulge you out all over, is what Elizabeth Cady Stanton's dressmaker says to Elizabeth Cady Stanton. I am not...

I am not going to add a pocket to your dress even if you're begging me to do this. And Elizabeth Cady Stanton writes a whole article about this. And I think these designers, American sportswear designers, were saying you can put a pocket all over the place. Although not everyone was so easily convinced. I mean, didn't they have to fight against their bosses and their manufacturers to let them include the pockets?

Claire McArdle is always arguing with her production manager, drag down fights about making sure that they could include pockets. I was like, no, no, we don't want to do this. I mean, same deal with today, fast fashion. What's the first thing that's going to go? What's easy to get rid of? A pocket. Why? Well, it's not easy. It's not easy to make. They're not easy to make. This is what my students at Rhode Island School of Design told me.

It's the commitment to add a pocket. You have to like fit it and think about how it's going to work and it has to be flat and you have to try it 25 times before you get it right when you're making a pattern. And that's the kind of time and effort that quickly goes by the wayside.

It's the first to go when expense is considered or, oh, I want it to look like that movie star and I'm going to not include a pocket at all. Well, so I was going to ask you, yeah, how do you think that the conversation around pockets has evolved even since we've talked last? Because I just feel like it has pockets has become this

I'm gonna say it's become like a bit of a girl bossy rallying cry. In a weird way, it feels like they've never been more in the discourse, but it seems to have gone a little bit awry to me. I would agree. Really? Yeah, I would. Yeah. And absolutely, because it's not, we still are not at a place where it's standard and expected. It's a rallying cry, and it's the first to go when other things are more important.

All sorts of brands are saying, "Buy me." We're including pockets in our women's wear. But I think the most movement has been bags for men's wear. The fashion handbag for men's wear has made greater strides in these last few years since we've talked than including pockets in women's wear. And this was noted by Virginia someone in 1918, "Pockets come and go, and they still do."

I think that's all. This was really fun. Thank you, Hannah. Pockets! That was a conversation with Hannah Carlson, live at the New York Public Library. Check out her book, Pockets, An Intimate History of How We Keep Things Close. It's so good. The original episode was made back when the show was nestled in the womb of 99% Invisible, the best podcast in the world.

That original episode was edited by Katie Mingle and Joe Rosenberg, with fact-checking by Graham Heysha, mixed by Sharif Youssef, executive produced by Roman Mars, with music by Sasami Ashworth and Ray Royal. With special thanks also to Piers Gelley, Delaney Hall, Emmett Fitzgerald, Vivian Leight, Kurt Kolstad, and the rest of the 99PI family. There's a portrait Radiotopia from PRX