Shirt Pockets

There is an evil plot afoot to eliminate functional pockets from dress shirts. This is serious. I always carry at least one pen on me at all times. I want #%&%@# shirt pockets!

I bought the shirt shown at the right, at Mark's Work Wearhouse. These are supposed to be working clothes. They are only suitable for jobs that do not require writing implements. Are Mark's Work Wearhouse customers presumed to be illiterate, or are they assuming that everyone relies on personal devices now? Where will we store personal devices once pockets are eliminated?

Here is a proper dress shirt. Note how my pen fits all the way into the pocket. Note how I did not notice that the coffee I spilled on it has not come out in the laundry. Dammit!

Here is a brand new shirt. I carefully selected one with a shirt pocket. Unfortunately, some twit has decided the pocket looks better if it is small. My pen sticks way out, and it falls out easily. Lamy Safari pens have excellent pocket clips, but in this tiny pocket it barely works. I noticed this one evening when I checked out what a certain black kitty was batting around in my front hallway. Fortunately, I found and reassembled all the pieces.

A shirt pocket should be large enough to hold a letter sized piece of paper (8.5×11"), folded twice.

Does duct tape work? If you look carefully, you will see that I do not wear this shirt to work. I use it when I stain furniture.

The fashion industry has declared war on functional clothing. This is the only explanation for spiked heels (not that I wear them). Check out the two jackets I am wearing.

The blazer and my rather beat up hiking jacket are surprisingly similar. Both jackets have fairly large pockets at the front and bottom. Both jackets have inside pockets, admittedly on opposite sides. The blazer would be a very nice, practical jacket if only I could button up the front. There is only one functional button on this jacket.

To the left, you see my great uncle August, photographed sometime in the late 1890s, wearing a suit. He was a farmer. He is in his Sunday best, which includes a double breasted jacket that buttons almost all the way up. Add a scarf, and this is a nice, warm jacket for fall and spring. The double breast is a good way to seal and insulate the front of a jacket in cold weather when people can't be bothered to invent zippers.

Blazers and micro-fibre hiking jackets were originally designed to do the same thing. They keep you warm and dry in cold, wet weather. The fashion industry has had well over a century to render the blazer not-functional.

Maybe we need to bring back pocket protectors. These do not solve the problem of no pockets, but they help when the pocket is too small. If the fashion industry does not want to see pocket protectors, they must provide us adequate sized pockets!

If the shirt has no pockets, a pocket protector could be held in place with duct tape!

Pocket protectors used to be the height of geek fashion. A proper pocket protector bore a Motorolla or Texas Instruments logo. This one is from PEM, a manufacturer of press-in thread inserts, suitable for aluminium sheet, and soft steel. This is not really good geek fashion, but it was all I could find. I am a mechanical engineering technologist and I actually specify these things. Any time you need tapped holes in thin, soft sheet metal, you now know what to use! Pocket protectors are all the more reason for the fashion industry to stop pissing us off!

Here is my fashion consultant, Chico. He is checking out the coffee stain on my otherwise very nice dress shirt.