Your dress's 'fake pockets' might actually be real — here's how to open them

• Take heed: Some "fake pockets" on dresses and skirts may actually be real.
• They're actually just sewn shut and can be opened easily.
• However, fashion historian Sarah C. Byrd told INSIDER, you may want to keep the pocket intact so the silhouette of the garment doesn't change.
• The tension between fashion and function when it comes to pockets has been around for centuries.

Fake pockets are the scourge of women's fashion.

Designers often add false pockets to all sorts of clothing. These "pockets" have external slits for aesthetic reasons, but don't have any actual depth to them. They're pretty much useless and are just there to trick you. Or are they?

It turns out plenty of pockets are actually just sewn shut. And they're waiting for you to open them.

I first became aware of the possibility when my fiancée expressed her frustration with a recent Lilly Pulitzer skirt she acquired. Accustomed to her frequent complaints about the lack of pockets on her dresses and skirts — as orchestrated by Big Handbag anda history of sexism— I sympathized.

But when I took a closer look, I realized something: They were real.

Here’s how to open up your fake pockets.

There are two easy ways to tell if a pocket is real or fake. One, just feel the fabric where the pocket should be. If it's thicker than the surrounding area, there's probably something there.

Two, poke around where the pocket would open. The threads that sew real pockets closed should be loose. You should be able to pull them apart a couple of millimeters easily and tell if it has depth.

If you want to open the pockets (and you should!), you can use a scissor or knife. I like using a seam ripper, whichyou can get for a couple of bucks on Amazon and is more precise.

Just cut apart the threads one by one and gently pull them out. Voila! You have a new pocket.

But why do clothing brands put sewn-up pockets in the first place? Basically, it keeps the shape of the garment while it's being stored in warehouses or on a hanger in stores, so they're not weighed down by open pockets and become misshapen. It's common practice on jackets and men's suits and helps the garment retain its overall shape and structure. If you're worried about keeping the shape of your clothing in its original condition, you might want to keep the pockets closed.

There's a long history of pocket controversy. (Pock-troversy?)

So why do fake pockets exist, anyway? To figure that out, it helps to look at the origins of pockets on women’s clothing.

The history of pockets, historian and Fashion Institute of Technology professor Sarah C. Byrd told INSIDER, is the history of the fashionable silhouette. Byrd recently worked on the exhibition "Pockets to Purses: Fashion + Function" at the FIT museum.

From the 17th century to the 19th century, pockets were basically removable bags that could be lined up with slits in wide dresses.  Women would typically have one set of pockets that they'd wear under different dresses. (As a side note, thieves would often sneak up behind women and cut their pockets off in order to steal their valuables.) By the early 19th century, the fashionable silhouette became more streamlined (women were wearing fewer crinolines and caged bustles). That’s when it became common to see pockets sewn into dresses.

"As the fashionable silhouette changed in the early 19th century to becoming less about full skirts and more about a streamlined silhouette, there was not as much space to put anything underneath your skirt," Byrd said.

But fashion goes in cycles, and the standard fashionable silhouette started to become fuller by the mid-1800s. At that point, pockets were often sewn into skirts.

They still didn’t completely look like the pockets we have today — they were often on one side of the garment, and not quite as big as the handbag — but they were still functional. "You can slip small things, household things, personal effects into them," Byrd said. 

After mass-produced pockets became widespread a few decades later, you’d see them sewn-in to retain the integrity of the garment shape.

To Byrd, the sewn-in pocket is a "design memo" asking the wearer not to open it. She doesn’t open them up, because that would "disrupt the silhouette" of the clothing as the designer intended it.

"You don’t really want to encourage people shoving their hands in there to disrupt the line of the silhouette," Byrd said. "If you want to be fashionable and honor the ideal silhouette, then don’t open them. But if you want to actually try and use them, open them."

There’s always been tension between pockets and function.

Byrd said this discussion over whether pockets should be functional or decorative has a long history.

On one hand, there’s the school of thought that pockets are essentially functional features. They’re supposed to be little pouches on your clothes that hold stuff. Housedresses and chore coats have big pockets to hold key items, and to make the wearer's life easier. Trousers are designed with smaller pockets because the wearer is likely to have a briefcase for larger items.

This trend extended into the luxury market. Take for example this "cash and carry" suit designed by Elsa Schiaparelli in 1940. It’s a dinner jacket with big, functional pockets.

But there are also garments like this circa-1948 dress by Edward Molyneux. It has prominent pockets, but they’re really there to emphasize a slim waist.

"[Molyneux's] look like functional pockets, but they’re not really," Byrd said. "They’re padded on the inside to create a fashionable silhouette, this illusion of a narrow waist and wider hips."

And in more modern times, features like the small pocket on jeans, though pretty much useless, are kept around because they help train the eye where to look at the body. 

"It’s strange to see jeans without the five pocket setup," Byrd said. "They’re immediately a different category of jean. So these kind of design elements linger and are more a visual reference for a design architect than a function. It’s more about how it looks than the function."

So yeah, the debate over useless pockets has been raging for decades.  

"It’s only happening now because people are talking about it now," Byrd said. "The design hasn’t changed."

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