A recent discussion with some friends brought up this little historical tidbit, and it made me wonder how many people know…or don’t know…about this curious historical oddity.
Almost without exception, every pair of jeans, ever since they were invented in the 1870s by Levi Strauss, and almost every pair of slacks or chinos produced ever since, has featured a small pocket sewn into the right-front pocket. It’s not very big, and if you’re lucky, you’ll manage to get three or four fingers into it before it gets too tight to fit anything else in there!
But what is it?
A lot of people like to call this the “fifth pocket” and believe that it was an afterthought added to jeans by the L.Strauss company when they were designing their first pairs in the late 1800s. But actually, nothing could be further from the truth.
The mysterious inner pocket on the right side of a pair of jeans was an intentional add-on, and it was placed there from the very start to serve a very particular function – It’s a watch-pocket, for storing your pocketwatch!
The pocketwatch goes into the pocket, and the chain or fob clips to the nearest belt-loop for security.
The Mysterious Fifth Pocket
What, then, you might ask – is this mysterious “fifth pocket” that everybody keeps talking about? Does it even exist? If the watch-pocket or fob-pocket isn’t the fifth pocket, then which one is?
There is a fifth pocket, and it does exist. But it isn’t the little one on the right where your pocketwatch lives.
Nope – actually, it’s round the back! The “fifth pocket” mentioned so often in association with jeans refers to the rear hip-pocket, sewn on the left-hand side! Prior to 1901, Strauss jeans were not sold with this feature, and it was this pocket – and not the watch-pocket – which was sewn onto jeans later on as an afterthought, to balance out the number of pockets available for use.
The Function of the Fob Pocket
So if your friends ever ask you – what is the fifth pocket – you can tell them – it’s not the little pocket on the front – it’s the big one at the back! And that little pocket on the front isn’t for keys…condoms…pepper-spray…coins…or anything like that. It’s for your pocketwatch!
Sources:
Webpages about the function and history of their pockets, from the official Levi Strauss website: