MALE envy: The Pocket Problem

August 15, 2026•2 min read

MALE envy: The Pocket Problem

Ask a man to name one thing he'd never give up in a suit, and pockets are usually somewhere near the top. Keys, phone, wallet, hands shoved in when he's thinking — his suit was built to hold his actual life.....

Ask a woman the same question, and there's a decent chance her "pockets" are decorative. Sewn shut. Two inches deep. Just deep enough to hold a folded receipt and absolutely nothing else.

This isn't a small thing dressed up as a big one. It's a genuinely strange design choice that's persisted for decades, and it says something about who professional clothing was actually built for.

Somewhere along the way, women's professional wear optimized for silhouette over function. A smooth line at the hip mattered more than whether you could carry your own phone without a bag. So we adapted — bigger handbags, phone in hand, wallet wedged somewhere uncomfortable — and just accepted it as the cost of looking polished.

Meanwhile, he's walked into the same meeting with his hands free and his keys exactly where he left them...and Buddy, what's with the blugding wallet half way down your thigh?

It's a small inconvenience for women most days. But small inconveniences, repeated daily for an entire career, add up to something bigger: another quiet tax on looking professional that men simply never had to pay.

This is one of those problems that's actually easy to fix — it just requires someone to care enough to build it in. We didn't have this solved either, if we're being honest. Writing this piece meant sitting with our own complaint long enough to realize wecouldn't publish it without doing something about it.

So now the bellaBALAS wrap jacket in the capsule carries its own pocket, built directly into the tie — because once you notice the problem, there's no excuse not to fix it.

Because "professional" was never supposed to mean "figure out where to put your keys."

Want more of this? Follow along — the next installment in the Male Envy series lands soon.
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Shawna Balas

Shawna Balas founded bellaBALAS fifteen years ago on a simple belief: clothing should be made to last, not to be replaced. As designer and founder, she oversees every piece from the mill in Ontario to the final stitch — which is why she can tell you exactly what's in the fabric, and exactly why it doesn't pill, fade, or shrink. This is where she writes about the industry she's spent a career trying to do differently. Sometimes practical, sometimes opinionated, always hers.

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