When my friend arrived at my place for dinner last week, she looked pretty normal. Apart from one thing. Slung across her torso was a multi-coloured rope with her phone attached. I looked closer. Was it an excessively long lanyard? A spaghetti-thin handbag? No. Apparently, it’s a phone strap.
As it turns out, the concept is pretty simple. Picture an elongated necklace, that you can wear like a cross-body bag, only it exclusively carries your device. The apparatus is having a moment in general right now: American “It-girl” models Gigi Hadid and Kendall Jenner are often seen sporting beaded lanyards attached to their phones. And the accessory has even made its way to the frontbenches: deputy prime minister Angela Rayner wore one – albeit a more professional and plain version – to a meeting at 10 Downing Street last month.
In practical terms, the phone strap might make perfect sense, since the average person in the UK is glued to their phone for more than three-and-a-half hours per day – so why not make it a permanent fixture in your outfit? But, really, the trend hasn’t been inspired by our limb-like attachment to our devices at all. It’s just a way to distract women from noticing the lack of pockets on our clothes.
Women’s clothes have rarely been designed for practical purposes. It’s something that has bothered me for most of my life. That’s why I leap for joy when I find a dress or skirt with in-built pockets (or get jealous when I see a carefree man stroll around without a bag). In reality, most of my clothes have no pockets at all. Sometimes, at first glance, a garment I’m eyeing up might appear to have a pocket but it’s merely a “fake pocket”, and totally useless. And as for my jeans, their pockets are only big enough to hold a packet of Wrigley’s Extra. Even as I write this, my outfit has one functioning pocket, and it can’t even hold my phone. By comparison there’s no pocket poverty in menswear. Lush pouches of fabric are delicately sewn into the interior and exterior of suit jackets. And when it comes to trouser pockets, they are much deeper than women’s.
If you’ll allow me to dabble in some fashion history, it’s pretty clear that pockets are political. The story of their evolution in womenswear – or lack thereof – is defined by sexism and economic inequality, with women traditionally expected to dress for beauty rather than utility
But of course, women still had to carry stuff, even back in the 17th century. Then, women wore secret, removable pocket pouches underneath their petticoats. Some women used them to keep or hide sentimental items such as letters, portrait miniatures or other mementos of loved ones, according to the V&A. While its archives have little evidence of what women were storing in these bags, police records of pick-pocketing show that women would carry around utility objects like small knives, gloves or sewing items such as thimbles.
By the 20th century, when dresses became more form-fitting, pocket pouches had fallen totally out of favour. Speaking to The New York Times last year, Hannah Carlson, a fashion history lecturer and author of Pockets: An Intimate History of How We Keep Things Close, explained that many dressmakers didn’t want to sew pockets into women’s clothes because it interfered with the silhouette of the garment, especially if the pockets were filled. “Activist Elizabeth Cady Stanton had to plead with her dressmaker to include a pocket in her gown,” said Carlson. “Her dressmaker countered that pockets would ‘bulge you out just awful!’” It was a different story in menswear. Pockets became a standard when the suit became industrialised in the 1850s. Carlson explained that pockets were just “a part of doing business in menswear”.
Fast forward to the ultra-modern phone strap, it’s easy to see why they’re so popular among women. The accessories industry has long benefited from women’s lack of pockets: many fashion historians credit the boom of the handbag in the Fifties to women’s new-found independence in the post-war years and the fact that, well, women had more things to carry around.
The phone strap is another accessory to reap the benefits of women’s lack of pockets. It also makes sense for our current era, since everything we could possibly need now is digitised on our phones. Already, it seems that designer brands are cashing in, too – by charging a pretty penny for what is essentially rope. Prada sells a phone case on a metal chain for £810, Miu Miu sells a leather one for £480, and at Hermes: £1,280.
But whatever the cost, I secretly can’t stand them. For while the phone strap helps you carry your essentials, it also tends to ruin your outfit. I tried my friend’s technicoloured one: it was completely unflattering as it cut down the middle of my chest. And, might I add, it’s particularly irritating to have your phone repeatedly hit your bum when you walk at a semi-fast pace. I yearn for the days when I’ll be able to leave the house with no bag at all and instead wearing an outfit with pockets capable of holding my phone, keys and card holder. But that’s wishful thinking.
My friend, meanwhile, tells me she bought her phone strap so it’s physically attached to her while she is walking and using it. There’s been a rise in phone thefts in her area: one phone is now stolen in London every six minutes, according to the Met Police. In lieu of pockets, a phone strap might act as another layer of protection and a possible deterrent from the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it thieves who trawl around the city on bikes. And ironically, women are more likely to be victims of phone theft than men, according to government statistics.
Still, I’m unconvinced a strap will actually help. To put it to the test, me and my friend decide – after a few glasses of wine – to stage a fake mugging in my living room, to see if the accessory can withstand even the hardest of tugs. I throw it on, playing the victim in this bit of amateur dramatics; my gym-going friend is the thief. When she pulls on my phone, the rope is so strong that I get pulled down with it. Suddenly I’m on the floor. Surely, by now, the thief would have just laughed at me and swanned off?
But you know what might have really helped me in this scenario? Clothes with some actual pockets. Do you hear me, fashion gods?
