The Amazon coat that took over the Upper East Side — and then the world

In the winter of 2018, every woman on the Upper East Side started wearing an unassuming olive-green coat. It was cheap, made by an unknown Chinese brand called Orolay, and, by March of that year, installed in online-shopping history as “the Amazon Coat” (you can read the full oral history, too).

Like all great legends, its origin is shrouded in mystery. No one knows exactly who bought the first Orolay coat, but by the time it caught the attention of Schneider, then the Strategist’s associate editor, it was all over town. “The coat’s appeal lies in its fashionable-yet-accessible, lightly directional look … and its startling price — the super-stylish women who own it take pleasure in telling curious onlookers that no, their jacket is not Sacai, and, actually, it costs under $100, including shipping if you’re an Amazon Prime member,” wrote Schneider. It had spread the old-fashioned way — by word of mouth among sharply dressed uptown women who saw their friend wearing it, then bought one, then told their friend, who bought one, too, and so on and so on, until uptown sidewalks were a sea of Army green.

Once we published our story, the coat went from an if-you-know-you-know status symbol to a now-everyone-knows viral item. It broke containment from the Upper East Side, to the point that you couldn’t walk down the street or take the subway anywhere without seeing one. Nowadays, products go viral all the time — all it really takes is a single TikTok video or trend piece to catch on before everyone is suddenly wearing the same thing — but at the time, the Amazon Coat was one of the first. Thousands of people bought it, it was covered by countless publications, and it even inspired its own very popular Instagram account.

Of course, the life cycle of any viral product ends the same way: Once everyone has it, no one really wants it anymore. And while the Amazon coat is mostly relegated to the back of people’s closets now, you still see the odd one in the wild every winter. It really is quite warm. —D.P.