I am one of the 10 million people who acquired an iPhone 6 or iPhone 6 Plus ten days ago.

Coming from Planet Android, I wasn’t as put off by the larger dimensions as everyone else in the technosphere seemed to be. But I was, as usual, put off by one thing that both the Apple product and its archnemesis from Google shared: the unpocketability of the phone, particularly by females.

This isn’t a new problem for women. Our skinny jeans have pockets, but there is no way an object bigger than a standard issue ID card fits in the front, and everyone knows that slipping a phone in your back pocket is an invitation for a treacherous dive into a toilet, or a backflip resulting in heartbreaking shatters. Purses have enclosures that were once suitable for the flip phone generation but have since become too snug for newer models. Throwing it into the main compartment seems risky, at best.

But the biggest problem might be the lack of pockets in the first place: women's slacks, dresses, and blazers often have no pockets, or worse, “fake” pockets that serve no utilitarian purpose besides sartorially leading the wearer on to believe they have a handy wardrobe aide, until it’s too late.

So how can an industry that focuses on women—whether it be models or products created primarily for a female demographic—consistently dodge the very people it markets to? Camilla Olson, creative director of an eponymous high tech fashion firm, points to inherent sexism within the industry. Mid-range fashion is a male dominated business, driven not by form and function, but by design and how fabric best drapes the body.

“I honestly believe the fashion industry is not helping women advance,” Olson said. And the lack of functional designs for women is one example. "We [women] know clearly we need pockets to carry technology and I think it’s expected we are going to carry a purse. When we’re working we don’t carry purses around. A pocket is a reasonable thing.”

Sara Kozlowski, who works in professional development at the Council of Fashion Designers of America and is a visiting critic with Parsons The New School of Design, is more blunt. She squarely places the blame on fast fashion labels busily churning out copies of high-end designs that aren’t adapted to the lives of a normal person who isn’t strutting down a runway.

“I think when you’re going to the upper price points of designer clothes, people tend to be less conscious of trends and more into quality and longevity,” Kozlowski said. So for them, it makes sense not to design around the latest smartphone model. “But in mid-market, contemporary brands, trends are what drive the industry. In that regard, it’s an epic fail.”

Olson believes the industry is overly focused on the visual appeal of clothing rather than how it can help women—and men, for that matter—live simpler, easier lives. She thinks it’s this preoccupation that’s kept the fashion industry from becoming relevant in today’s technocentric society.

“I find it discouraging,” Olson said. “Fashion looks selectively at who they let in and keeps women at a certain place. It’s not helping women move forward in the workplace.” Olson says that some designers have deemed pockets “too ugly” for clothing, while others simply don't think women need them. And these decisions, she says, have created a chasm in women’s fashion, and hold women back.

A man can simply swipe up his keys and iPhone on the way to a rendezvous with co-workers and slip them into his pocket. A woman on the way to that same meeting has to either carry those items in her hand, or bring a whole purse with her—a definitive, silent sign that she is a woman.

Fashion fans know that it takes time for new designs to go from runway to the streets, and, in the case of adjusting pockets in fashion, forecasters are looking at Fall 2015 for the earliest adopters of iPhone 6 pocketability. The Spring 2015 lines we saw featured on the latest slew of Fashion Weeks were developed six months before the season, according to Olson, with designs sketched out about six months before that. Given that the release of iPhone renditions are often top secret affairs, the timetable isn’t looking too promising for pockets in the next year or so. But given that designers have had years of large smartphone designs from other companies beyond the ballyhooed iPhone, expectations for a pocket revolution aren’t too high.