What makes a ‘cult coat’?

At 8pm on October 2 the fashion designer Charlotte Simone released the first of two drops of her eponymous label’s coats online. Despite the still-warm weather (it was a balmy 18C in London), by 8.05pm there were more than 10,000 people on the site waiting to buy one of her signature fluffy designs, priced on average at £350. “By midnight we had sold 80 per cent of stock,” Simone says. “Our customers are speedy; they know the coats will sell out fast.”

Simone has had her label for almost a decade, but over the past four years has developed a business model structured around two winter online drops, heavily trailed on her Instagram page and live only for one week. (There is a later drop in March, selling any samples, prototypes and unsold designs.)

Her designs are distinctive — the Olive, which sold out first earlier this month, is a fitted black jacket with shaggy boho fringing along the collar and front — and they are produced in limited numbers (the Olive is one of 450). Adding to the appeal is a Taylor Swift endorsement: when the singer wore a design in 2023, US sales increased by 240 per cent. This drop has been Simone’s best to date, with sales up 50 per cent on last year, and an increase in visitor traffic of 75 per cent year on year.

Of course, buying a coat for winter is nothing new. And luxury coats have been around for ages — think of the Burberry mac or MaxMara’s iconic 10181, both of which still attract admiring double takes on the street. But a cult coat is something different. For a start, it’s not a brand that everyone already recognises (just the few). Next, while the designers are at pains to emphasise their timelessness, they are nonetheless designed to stand out and scream (to those in the know) their significance.

Desire for a cult coat is propelled by social media — think of Toteme’s scarf coat, which sparks viral TikTok videos — but mustn’t be too overtly popular (or worse, inspire high-street dupes; that scarf coat is cult no more). Knowing that a style might sell out — or indeed already has — increases the appeal. Fashion folk like to feel special.

At Net-a-Porter key styles include Loewe’s autumn/winter 2024 brown biker jacket (£5,100, net-a-porter.com), which has already sold out, and Toteme’s oversized corduroy-trimmed waxed organic cotton jacket (£670, net-a-porter.com), which comes in at number five on the Lyst index of hot products for Q3 of 2024, and with Chloé’s checked wool and silk-blend coat (£2,775, net-a-porter.com) — nodding to the excitement Chemena Kamali generated with her outerwear collection during her Paris show.

Danish designer Astrid Andersen says that a cult coat needs to have “its own identity. It needs to give you the sense that someone put extra thought into it”. Her line of outerwear for her new label STEL garnered excitement when she showed it at Copenhagen Fashion Week (at the top of a former coal crane turned luxury hotel), with her double layered coat, which features a biblike layer and ties on the sides to adjust the shape, through fashion cycles, body changes and flights of fancy (£230, stelstores.com). It’s flying off the shelves: Copenhagen retailer STORM has recently had to restock after selling out twice.

Georgia Dant, founder of Marfa Stance, and former designer for Burberry and Rag & Bone, agrees. She feels the combination of her brand’s iconic return to quilting, coupled with the modular design of the coats “allows people to stand out and assert their uniqueness, no two pieces look the same”, while still remaining distinctively Marfa Stance.

The brand’s original signature quilt jacket, which she launched in 2019, has already achieved cult status and has been seen on the actor Katie Holmes. Dant’s predicted hit for this year — which has helped fuel a 50 per cent increase in sales in October — is the parachute parka, a voluminous water-resistant reversible coat (£1,150, marfastance.com). I’ve seen two in the wild this week already.

Making a virtue of practicality is a feature of some of the most wanted winter coats. Just as Dant’s designs all feature deep pockets (“which women love”), as well as button-on accessories such as rain hoods or mini-capes to add to the functionality of the coat, it is function (coupled with whimsy) that defines Cecilie Bahnsen’s spring/summer 2025 cult coat: a new black raincoat made with North Face technical fabric, but with a full Bahnsen skirt, ruches and embroidered flowers.

While the former Erdem designer is known for her voluminous gowns, she’s at heart a deeply practical designer who wants her creations worn, whatever the weather. “It has to be practical, of course — I’m Danish, we cycle everywhere — but we wanted something very beautiful too,” she says. “It’s got structure and shape and makes you look very considered. We wanted it to feel just as special as putting on one of our dresses.”

Volume is another popular trait this year: seen in the oversized design of the leather bikers that typify the cult Acne Studios jackets, Loewe’s biker, the flouncy parachute and Cecilie Bahnsen creations, and even in the dropped shoulders and generous cut of the Róhe.

Dr Carolyn Mair, chartered psychologist and author of The Psychology of Fashion, thinks that this desire for roominess speaks to our state of mind this season. “From a psychological perspective, oversized and expensive coats could be seen as a response to broader societal and emotional shifts,” she says. “These types of coats can project a sense of empowerment, style and luxury and symbolise protection from external pressures, providing a cocoon-like feeling, which can be psychologically comforting.”

There is a fine line to tread between zeitgeist and timelessness but purchasers of cult coats see them “as a long-term investment”, Mair says, that “signal status and taste”. Which means that while they are “now”, they also date well. Recently, at the Frieze art fair, I stood next to a woman getting her last year’s cult Raey coat out of the cloakroom. I watched as she pulled it around her, ready to head out into the dark Regent’s Park. It was the same one I’d dithered over until it was too late (I let the clock tick all the way down to spring, by which time, the label, owned by Matchesfashion, folded). My main thought after an afternoon of browsing art? I should have bought that coat.

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