this post was submitted on 11 Nov 2025
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What the actual fuck.
I've commented on here before how women's clothing generally doesn't have large-enough pockets for smartphones. A lot of modern women's clothing is form-fitting, and has small pockets.
So either you revise the clothing or add some kind of wearable bag/pocket.
Used to be that women wore dresses, had slits in the skirts that they could reach through, and then had sorta wearable pockets on beneath them. But full skirts are pretty dead now, so:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pocket
When I first ran into this, I thought "well, put the phone in your purse then, dammit, you're already carrying that for feminine hygiene products". Problem is that women don't haul (bulky) purses everywhere
walk into the office, say, set down the purse at the desk, and it's mostly staying at the desk. I don't know any women who wear their purses around the house. But they do want to keep the phone available all the time.
And the smartphone is a pretty ubiquitous item to want to carry around now.
So unless women's clothing changes to have large pockets and somehow deals with not messing up the body's silhouette or whatever makes that a problem or the smartphone form factor changes ("big smartwatch?"), I expect that people have to wind up with some kind of mini, wearable container. Like this.
I mean, this is a absurdly priced solution, but that's a fair point.
It's stupid fashion's that way. I always thought that when I saw girls sticking phones in their shorts waistbands or whatever.
We should go back to the future:
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Or even better, improve it:
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And have shorts like that too? I dunno, I'm not a fashion expert, but still.
I mean, I like the Lara Croft thigh holster route, but that might chafe.
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And if you're wearing it the way the male model is, you can probably add an outer shirt or jacket and wear it like an underarm money belt in less-secure environments. I have one of those that I repurposed for carrying a tablet. Looks very similar to this, though not the same brand or type of fabric:
https://www.amazon.com/Multi-Purpose-Anti-Thief-Security-Underarm-Messenger/dp/B077GD5C27
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Kind of like a very thin purse with a padded, short strap that's intended to optionally hide under one's clothes.
You don't need something that large to carry a phone, though. The sort of smaller thing that they're doing here is big enough for that.
Yeah, utility belt/sling over bags!
The thigh holsters seem a bit impractical though. If we're diving into more fiction fashion, how about the pocketed Normandy crew uniform from ME?
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I like those little built-in squares on the thighs.
Oh I'm not at all reacting to the usefulness. I'm reacting to the price of the item. Pockets on women's clothes are a bit of a disaster.
Eh, I mean, I wouldn't buy it, but then I wouldn't buy Apple products in general, as they're all gonna carry a premium. They sell into kinda a low-end luxury market. I dunno how many people remember back when Apple introduced the white earbuds with the iPod and had a marketing campaign focusing on their color, at a time when headphones were pretty universally a more-subtle black, to make it very obvious that what someone had in their pocket was an iPod.
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For some luxury goods, the point is to visibly show the item to others, to demonstrate that you can afford the item, engage in conspicious consumption. Then you get Veblen goods:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veblen_good
So people can prefer a higher-priced item, specifically because it lets them show off that they can afford it.
And if you figure that the closest thing to the "phone pocket" is women's purses, well...that's historically been a product category that sees a fair number of members that are Veblen goods, a lot of pricey items designed to show that their wearer can afford them. Like, a designer handbag isn't really any more functional than a far-less-expensive equivalent, yet lots of people buy them.
https://www.hermes.com/us/en/category/women/bags-and-small-leather-goods/bags-and-clutches/
Those are pretty hefty prices for the functionality you're getting.
If you figure that a phone pocket probably fills more-or-less the same fashion role, then I wouldn't be surprised if the potential to sell luxury phone pockets is comparable to that to selling luxury handbags.
Apple already kinda sells towards a low-end luxury market, so I expect that Apple's probably making a not-unreasonable move in trying to feel out whether there's potential for that among their customer base.
I wouldn't pay much for a luxury container for a phone, but that's me. My pockets fit my phone just fine, so I'm not even in the market in the first place. But...doesn't mean that Apple isn't making the right move from a business standpoint for them, I think.
EDIT: A quick kagi later, it sounds like the proper industry term is "affordable luxury" rather than "low-end luxury":
https://themetropolitan.metrostate.edu/iphone-17-apple-transforms-smartphones-into-symbols-of-affordable-luxury/