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).
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.
You are assuming that you know better than the experts who design and decide what clothes to sell. Those experts are sometimes wrong, yes, but not that often, you need really good arguments to convince us that you know better than them.
If everyone needs jeans, and everyone makes jeans with small pockets, everyone will buy jeans with small pockets and make the analytics show that the market is satisfied and profit targets are met.
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.
Surely, if seamstresses agree, then selling women’s clothes with bigger/more pockets is not a novel idea.
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).
Asked a close friend of mine who is a female seamstress. Their opinion on the matter:
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.
I find that hard to believe. Chairman at Zara is a woman, CEO of gap was a woman for at least 2020 to 2022, CEO of H&M is a woman.
> 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.
> Given the option of earning more money or preventing women from having more or bigger pockets
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.
> The fact that womens pockets are ridiculously small has become a meme is a good indication that they are wrong and do not care.
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.
Obviously, otherwise you wouldn't look at a thread about women's fashion on a start up tech forum. Everyone here clicked it since they want to see what start up tech people think about women's fashion.
Also, small creators enter the market all the time.
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.
People like to try on pants, and people who just want normal pants with functional pockets are the LAST people you'd expect to be looking through niche clothing boutiques lol. Not to mention custom clothes are super expensive.
I know you can go to India and pick out fabrics and have them make custom clothing, but you might be able to find someone online these days. For example, I searched “custom clothing india” and came up with these:
You don't understand, they want to both eat their cake and keep it. They want large pockets, but they also refuse to wear clothes they find ugly, and they find large pockets ugly, hence they wont find any clothes with large pockets since they filter them out before even considering it.
But of course if you ask them if they magically want larger pockets they say yes. I'd also want magical pants.
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).