A woman stands in front of the camera and shows her new dress.

She twists and turns, smiles.

So far, so usual, whoever uses Tiktok or Instagram thinks so.

Then a fast techno beat sets in.

A voice from the off says: "I like your dress." The woman's hands disappear into the sides of the dress where pockets are revealed, she begins to dance wildly and makes faces: "Thanks, it has pockets!" so her euphoric reply.

The message of the video: Only bags make women really happy.

The hashtag #ithaspockets (“It has pockets”) has 43 million views on Tiktok and nearly a hundred thousand posts on Instagram.

Why are women so happy about bags may be the reaction of unsuspecting onlookers.

Is it so rare that women's clothes have pockets?

The short answer is yes.

Why this is so is a bit more difficult to explain - and has to do with gender, class and social participation.

The keeper of the house didn't have to take anything

The history of costumes provides the first obvious explanation for the lack of pockets in women's clothing.

As early as the Renaissance, men's clothing usually had built-in pockets.

Logically, because the gentlemen went out into the world and needed all sorts of things for their everyday life.

Women, on the other hand, the keepers of the home, only began to wear bags tied around the waist under their dresses in the 17th century.

A fine lady did not have many occasions when she would have needed a bag – or a bag to be carried in her hand: “For hunting, going to church, to a ball,” explains Adelheid Rasche, head of the collection for textiles, clothing and jewelery at Germanic National Museum in Nuremberg.

"Servants, women in the middle or lower classes, farmer's wives who drove to the market, or a middle-class woman who ran a handicraft shop together with her husband, had more reasons for a bag." So these documents and certificates carried with them and that too money they earned.

There were also love letters, smelling salts and all sorts of other secrets if you tell the authors of the book “A Pocket.

A Hidden History of Women's Lives 1160-1900'.

Author Ariane Fennetaux calls the bag a "space that women actively controlled" and was "slightly outside of male sovereignty."

Adelheid Rasche cannot say with certainty whether these women were the first to have pockets in their dresses, “because these dresses have not been preserved.

They were applied, not lifted.”

A handkerchief, a fan, maybe a coin

The clothes of the well-to-do women at court have survived the most.

"The most important things that were transported in it were a handkerchief, a fan, the dance card, maybe a coin," says Adelheid Rasche.

These surviving bags were on average 40 centimeters long and between 25 and 30 centimeters wide, were tied around the waist and hid under the hoop skirt, between the undergarment and the overgarment, where there was still a lot of space at the time: "The overgarment, made of fine silk, had a side slit in the dress that was covered by layers of fabric.

You reached through it to reach the canvas bags that were carried underneath,” explains Rasche.