Pocketless formalwear

Design and alteration

A typical gown uses programmable textiles that continuously adjust their fibres to the wearer’s movements. It can redistribute weight, conceal a full meal and change its colour without losing the drape selected at fitting. Pockets need not produce visible bulges: their contents can be supported against the body by the same machinery. Demonstration garments do this successfully.^[1]

Owners can instruct domestic fabricators to add pockets. Many couture houses then revoke the garment’s authentication, causing venue cameras and other guests’ clothing to identify it as an altered copy. Restoring the label requires restoring the approved design. Menswear from the same houses commonly retains pockets; designers describe these as essential to its traditional lines.^[2]

Everyone at high-culture social events wears an elaborate hat. Common designs house live animals, interactive sculptures or superduperintelligent companions. A hat may negotiate its wearer’s seating allocation while refusing to open its animal enclosure for a lipstick.^[2]

Demand and prestige

Pocketed evening dresses are widely available, including exact visual copies of prestigious gowns. Women buy them for occasions where the label does not matter. At events where it does, buyers choose among approved collections that have already omitted pockets. Houses report strong sales as evidence that customers prefer the omission; requests for pockets are recorded as interest in the accessories range.^[3]

The Mara Vey pellet controversy of 2038 began when Vey, wearing a pocketless dress, placed a sealed Cairn pellet beside her wineglass. Her hosts subsequently supplied covered pellet dishes at each place setting. The dress remained unaltered. Lipstick, keepsakes and other small possessions still have to be carried even when communication and payments take place entirely through neural interfaces.^[4]

Handbags and other assistance

Handbag minds inhabit small walking bags and accompany guests between rooms. They can arrange interstellar investments while keeping track of a lipstick. Their owners often introduce them as friends. The more prestigious models exercise considerable discretion over what they carry; several refuse bodily waste, and asking one to hold a used tissue can begin a discussion of dignity that lasts longer than the reception.^[5]

Less opinionated carriers are available. Under service robot exclusion rules, some venues require them to wait outside the dining room. A carrier able to climb stairs and obey its owner can still be barred at the threshold. Human partners remain a common solution. A man may carry his partner’s belongings in a jacket whose fabric is less advanced than hers.^[5]

Complaints

At pre-merger reunions, women restored from early twenty-first-century backups sometimes assume their hosts are joking about the pockets. Their continuations can divide their attention among thousands of bodies and still resent having to find somewhere to put a lipstick. Uploaded guests reproduce the complaint in simulated ballrooms whose dress codes preserve physical fashion. Finding a gown with pockets remains grounds for interrupting a conversation to announce, “It has pockets!”^{[subjective wording][6]}

References

1. ↑ a ↑ b Couture Materials Laboratory (2043). Evening fabrics: load concealment, self-repair and emergency life support. Demonstration catalogue.
2. ↑ a ↑ b Association of Couture Houses (2043). Authentication conditions for altered garments; approved hats, womenswear and menswear fittings.
3. ↑ The Borough (2044). “They asked for pockets. We sold them bags.”
4. ↑ Vey, Mara (22 September 2038). Statement to The Borough about her dress and the lack of a nearby bin; Morrow Children’s Fund (3 October 2038), banquet service memorandum.
5. ↑ a ↑ b Handbag Companions’ Assembly (2044). Carriage agreements, refusals and reception access: annual case digest.
6. ↑ Reunion Licences Board (2044). Clothing and personal effects at pre-merger reunions: participant interviews and simulated-venue rules.