It stretches credulity, given the control women stereotypically have over clothing decisions, that large-pocketed clothes would not be an option if there was demand. Evidence suggests that any demand is a vocal minority.
As an exercise, go to any mall or shopping center and try to find a pair of women's jeans that meet the following criteria:
1. Decent quality material, is not deliberately pre-destroyed 2. Functional pockets, but not outlandish 90s style cargo pockets 3. Cut with a straight lower leg, not flared or tapered "skinny", and a proportional leg overall, not extra-wide or skinny 4. A waist size that doesn't assume the wearer is an athlete with a flat stomach (remember, women's pants are sized by number, not by waist x length), even in a "curvy" fit 5. Is not purpose-designed hiking gear
If you can find anything meeting all 5 criteria, I will pay you a $50 finder's fee and consider booking a trip to visit your fair city, because my wife would be thrilled to know they exist.
Revealed preference only ever makes sense when interpreted as preference among available options, not preference among all possible options.
> Evidence suggests that any demand is a vocal minority
The demand for any one individual improvement is probably a relatively vocal minority. There are so many busted messed up attributes about women's clothing that it's hard to choose any one of them to be vocal about. So the overall effect is diluted.
That, and, a lot of women are probably just used to carrying their stuff in a handbag and don't even realize that decent pockets could be an option. Likewise for the unnecessary forced selection between super skinny and super wide jeans.
Is it possible that your criteria is not possible? If it is possible, buy a vacation to Bangladesh or India, and go to one of the many fabric stores. They have people who can design and make literally make whatever clothes you want. It won’t be $50, but it would be affordable for many in the US.
The question is, is it worth sufficiently more than the $30 clothes that clothes sellers are betting will appeal to a much more broad audience?
>Revealed preference only ever makes sense when interpreted as preference among available options, not preference among all possible options.
In the case of clothing, especially women’s clothing, surely the available options comes close to all possible options, especially after all these decades. Carrying smartphones has been ubiquitous for 10+ years, surely someone in the supply chain has personally (or their spouse) experienced the need for bigger pockets.
Yes, clearly. That's a reasonable thing to suggest /s
The issue is that the meaningful demand is not there, or already filled and the market is just small. As nerdponx observed, it isn't really about pockets. There are 4 different other concerns that probably outrank pockets and that is just specific to his wife. And she might not even buy the things when she sees them. When I buy pants, I literally just buy a long pair of pants with the most and largest pockets. I dunno what the name for them is, tradesmen wear them. Cargo pants? They carry a lot of cargo. That in a nutshell is why male pants get pockets and womans pants don't.
Which is an answer of course, just not a satisfactory one for the majority of people.
Whenever I find a pair of jeans that are, as you described, straight leg, 4 pockets of a size large enough to fit my phone comfortably and my wallet (yes I use a men's slim wallet), not sparkly or embroidered, I will buy a half dozen and pray my weight won't change too much. (Asking for a good fabric in top of that is just too much now.)
Contrary to small phones though, big pocket pants seem like something you could produce without much investment. But then you could not compete with the pricing of big cheap brands and I assume that makes the market situation as is: it's too niche for mass taste and the niche is not willing to invest more money.
I am wondering how many women just buy pants made for men to get bigger pockets?
Cargo pants. Also its not a problem to buy and wear mens clothes.
Then why complain about women's clothes being dysfunctional?
"Not a problem, just buy a pick-up truck instead"
Cargo pants are not the same as jeans with larger pockets, nor is changing to mens clothing the same as getting larger pockets in the womens option, which tend to have different shapes and available sizes.
Being uptight about gender performance should always be ridiculed.
And this isn't limited to jeans. If you take an average hiking coat men's ones also have more and better pockets to women's. And we do not take handbags on hikes.
Choice only reflects preference when sufficient choices are available (in this case, having common options with large pockets), and that making a selection based on preference in that area does not require significant downgrades on other areas (having a cargo pants option is not sufficient if the user is looking for skinny jeans with larger pockets).
These "experts" only maximize for their own preferred design and target profits. The fact that womens pockets are ridiculously small has become a meme is a good indication that they are wrong and do not care.
Ask any seamstress and they will agree.
This isn't true, it can be a meme anyway if women prefer the looks of small pockets they wont even consider the larger pocketed one, and we end up in the current situation.
It isn't hard to find clothes with larger pockets, it is hard to find clothes women like with larger pockets.
If you can get skinny jeans with room for a phone for men, you should be able to get skinny jeans with room for a phone for women.
And making clothes with bigger/more pockets does not require a high barrier to entry, the technology has been there for decades.
And profit margins on clothes are tiny, so it stands to reason that sellers would be looking for any edge they can get to sell more clothes and/or at a higher price.
If you agree with the above, then there are two options:
1) for decades, people whose livelihood is selling clothes have missed an obvious opportunity to earn more money
2) people whose livelihood is selling clothes have not been able to succeed in selling women’s clothes with bigger/more pockets
If option 1, then someone needs to jump into this business. I sympathize with my wife and daughter who also complain about the lack and size of pockets, but I am not sure how to square that with the above parameters. Maybe it is an under-explored business opportunity, but it is so low barrier to entry that it seems unbelievable that the answer is not sufficient lack of demand (option 2).
1. The popular brands are run by men who do not understand and/or agree with the issue.
2. The large manufacturers as they have favorable supply deals, and threaten suppliers to not sell to competitors at the risk of losing their business, resulting in lack of affordable materials to build competing businesses.
The former being the reason for the current bias in options, and the latter explaining why there is no fair market for alternative options.
> 1. The popular brands are run by men who do not understand and/or agree with the issue.
What is there to understand? Bigger pockets fit more things. It is physics.
It is possible, but I doubt a man leading a clothing company is deciding against making more money by selling clothes with bigger pockets due to a philosophy of believing women’s clothes should not have pockets.
Given the option of earning more money or preventing women from having more or bigger pockets, surely every single leader in the clothing business is not going to forego more money.
There is no market force that would decease revenue from not changing existing products unless another but manufacturer does it first and attracts customers away.
Literally every time this has come up in conversation I've heard women complain that there aren't any options.
But of course if you ask them if they magically want larger pockets they say yes. I'd also want magical pants.
I've looked nowhere and I can't find it!
Literally every few years some company comes out claiming they'll make woman's pants with pockets.
I bought a phone without a 3.5mm jack once because I didn't think to check. I may have to buy one again when my Pixel dies due to lack of options.
Clearly I don't care about 3.5mm jacks /s
Sure, try to buy anything from Pairess (2019) [1]. It turns out functional woman's clothes isn't a good enough business to last 4 years.
[1]: https://www.affirm.com/business/blog/affirm-pairess-disrupt-...
2018: https://www.fastcompany.com/90262598/pockets
2019: https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/570469/finally-womens-je...
2021: https://yourstory.com/herstory/2021/10/functional-pockets-wo...
A lot of these brands are still alive as well from what i can see:
https://mmlafleur.com/collections/pants
https://www.bodenusa.com/en-us/womens-pants
One brand went bankrupt due to covid however:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Outlier/comments/mv3th8/brands_like...
If some indie brand was seeing huge demand selling women's clothes with large pockets, the mainstream brands would hop on the bandwagon in a heartbeat.
https://www.eshakti.com/default.aspx https://www.cloudtailor.com/
I do not want to go rummaging on niche shops or to buy online and have the faff of returning things that don't fit
Fashion is always on the move, vacillating through a range of possibilities in a way that rhymes with previous periods. And yet, certain invariants seem to hold or dominate over time and space.
I bet that if large pockets were introduced, women would express either indifference or select against them. (Anecdotally, I asked a woman whether she'd want larger pockets, and she responded that she doesn't like pockets at all, and doesn't like having anything in them when they are there.)
The belief women's pockets are inferior because they're smaller sounds to me like a boneheaded presumption that completely ignores the difference in needs, body shape, and preferences between the sexes, a kind of boorish and blinded egalitarianism. You wouldn't say that the wool dress pants a lawyer might wear are inferior to jeans because construction workers can't use them during work. That's just pure fallacy. The purposes that each is made for is different. The purpose is the measure, and there are different purposes.
Have you worn skinny jeans for males? The pockets are horrendous as well.
> On average, women’s skinny jean pockets were 3.5 inches (48%) shorter and 0.3 inches (6%) narrower than men’s skinny jeans.
IMHO you have it backwards. The women that control clothing decisions are a small minority of all women. I bet if you polled women you’d find a majority that would favor larger pockets.
If we conducted a poll of 50 women, we might well find most of them say they want pants with bigger pockets. If you start a big-pocket line of womans clothing, you'll probably sell a lot less than someone who tries alternate tactics. Or make a fortune, what do I know. But if anyone believes there is a fortune to be made they can go try that remarkably easily and yet small pockets persist.
Calling them liars is a bit much in this scenario. I would blame the poll more than the person answering the poll. If I ask you: do you want a Porsche? You might say yes, but if i say: i can give you a Porsche for a million. You will probably say no.
They should probably ask a more nuanced question around what kind of trade-offs people would be willing to make for those bigger pockets.
The apparel/garment industry is highly fragmented with a low barrier-of-entry. It's not as "top-down" as your sentence seems to be implying. There are plenty of how-tos on the web explaining how to turn your clothing designs into products using contract manufacturers in China etc. That's why amateur Youtube influencers with no experience in the garment industry can "launch" their own clothing lines.
It seems that if "women's pants with bigger pockets" was desired by enough potential buyers to be profitable, some entrepreneurs would already have taken advantage of that arbitrage opportunity and become rich.
I agree with the sibling comment[1] that women may prefer bigger pockets if that one characteristic was isolated -- but they also prioritize other aspects such as the "look" the pants that end up forcing smaller pockets. Women's clothing is often a prime example of form-over-function (as a deliberate tradeoff) rather than function-over-form.
I think it's slightly more nuanced than that.
The way I think about values is that everyone values everything all the time. The interesting part is when values come into conflict.
So it's probably true that women do value putting things in their pockets. But they (evidently) value incompatible things more.
Women against burkas or female circumcision are also vocal minorities in parts of the world too.