I appreciate the insight; I don't buy these products, so hearing from someone who does is helpful. I guess at the end of the day there still have to be forces pushing these companies not to add/enlarge pockets, because any economic model would say that corporations – who'd burn your house down if it saved them a nickel – know that this debate has been going on, have probably run countless trials, focus groups, etc., and would pounce on this the second they saw profit.
- Purses do alleviate this burden on corporations a lot. If purses disappeared overnight, the children working in Southeast Asian jean sweatshops would be in for a bad, bad morning. (I'd also say I don't think this is a conspiracy to sell purses, as the market's barrier for entry is low enough and purses already commonplace enough that they'd only be hurting themselves.)
- At minumum there's always some tradeoff when you have pockets. I'd bet that, beyond the baseline material cost of making pockets, it costs more and more in labor to hide the pockets as the pants become more form-fitting and the pockets become larger.
- So even if you could make something that's form-fitting with normal pockets (assuming no noticeable trade-off in form), it'd probably cost more at a price women aren't willing to pay in an age of expansive wardrobes and fast fashion.
That's just a guess going off what you've said, which I believe – mostly, anyway, since it feels like larger pockets would always diminish form-fitting in at least some small way.