Who Picked My Pocket?

The arrival of mass-produced ready-made clothing changed everything and cast us into well-defined sizes. If the neck size is A, the waist shall be less than B and so on. If you do not conform to these standards, your clothes are not going to fit very well unless you can afford 'bespoke' clothing. A shirt that fits you very well is, therefore, to be cherished. Ask any man and he will agree.

So, the other day, when I bought a couple of dress shirts that fit me very well, I was naturally happy. I liked the colours, the cut and the styling. However, when I put one of them on a few days later, I was surprised and dismayed to find that the shirt had no pocket. I thought that the tailor must have forgotten it but I found that the other shirt too lacked a pocket. This sent a chill down my spine. Are they eliminating the pocket from men's dress shirts now? After all, it has been eliminated from most of the tee-shirts and polo shirts.

If I thought there was one thing that was safe from designers, it was the pocket in a man's dress shirt. They could do what they liked with collars, pleats on the sleeve or the back, the buttons on the collar (or lack of them), but the pocket was expected to be there on the left chest. These shirts would not be considered very formal and the absence of a pocket was completely baffling. Few men wear suits or sport coats to work these days and the shirt pocket is indispensable.

I need the pocket to hold my reading glasses and optionally a pen. Without my glasses, I cannot read anything except perhaps large traffic signs. I have already dropped my glasses on the floor a few times trying to put them in the non-existent pocket. Carrying them in a case, I find, is impractical. How do I carry the case itself? I will likely misplace it somewhere. If you want to suggest the pant pocket for keeping the glasses, well, they are going to get damaged before long. That's a gamble that I am not willing to take. A hard case will protect the glasses but, unfortunately, it is too bulky fit in the pocket. Besides, the pant pockets are already occupied by my wallet and my cell phone. As you can see, I have got a 'Yes, but' to counter every 'Why don't you' you can throw at me.

I am usually careful in selecting clothes at the shop and wondered how I missed seeing that the shirts lacked pockets. Then I remembered. You see, there was this whole bank of other shirts on display in the most startling colours - the loudest red, magenta, neon green and so on - that had overwhelmed my senses and sent me reeling. Seriously, they were loud enough to startle a sleeping bull and perhaps give him lifelong nightmares. Wearing them in public can be a traffic hazard as otherwise sane drivers may lose control of their cars upon being stunned by their appearance. They ought to carry a warning. Small wonder then, that after seeing them, I had overlooked the missing pockets on the shirts I bought.

I remember the time when shirts had pockets on both sides of the chest. You could see men sporting whole sets of pens in their pockets at work - different colours for different purposes. Some shirts even came with a safety pocket on the inside where you could store valuables out of the reach of pickpockets. Other shirts had flaps over the pockets and/or buttons to close the pockets, making them more secure and imparting a military look to them.

While having no pocket is a bit of a nightmare for me and for most men I am sure, I wonder how women put up with a pocketless existence. There are many puzzling things about women's clothes, but the lack of pockets is the hardest to understand. Women must find the constant need to carry a bag exhausting. I bet one of them cracked under the strain, became a designer and took out her frustration by removing the precious chest pocket from men's shirts.

Men have always preferred practicality in the matter of clothes. That is why we have 'Relaxed Fit' style available for everything  (I do not believe that such a phrase will ever be associated with women's clothing). So it is deeply distressing to note the absence of pockets on new shirts. One hopes this does not become a trend. We should firmly resist this attempt by misguided designers. Equally firmly, we should reject the new loud colors for shirts in the interest of public safety.