The reason why there’s a tiny pocket in your jeans
It's long been the black hole of mankind's favourite bottoms.
A place where you can store minuscule items – spare coins, chewed gum, tiny wrappers - only to never retrieve them unless you have fingers with the circumference of a match stick.
However, it turns out that the pointless-looking pocket on a pair of jeans does in fact have a purpose.
It all stems back to the 1800s, when denim jeans first arrived on the scene and wearers needed a place to stash their – wait for it – pocket watches.
Yes, that small space was designed to keep timepieces safe from getting smashed during the day's activities.
The issue came to the forefront of fashion quandaries this week after a Quora thread asking the very same question was rediscovered.
"To keep [the pocket watches] from getting broken, Levi's introduced this small pocket where they could keep their watch," wrote the knowledgeable Nitin Achdev on the forum.
Levi's backed up the fact in 2014, including the thinking behind the small storage space in a feature about oft-forgotten pant parts.
"The first blue jeans had four pockets – only one in back and, in the front, two plus the small, watch pocket," the brand revealed.
"Originally included as protection for pocket watches, thus the name, this extra pouch has served many functions, evident in its many titles: frontier pocket, condom pocket, coin pocket, match pocket and ticket pocket, to name a few.
"Not only is the pocket extremely useful for holding tiny trinkets, it is also is loved by denim heads for the faded and worn nature it takes on over time."
So there you have it folks, now you can strut around feeling like a real jeans genius.
First appeared on Stuff.co.nz
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