By Stephy Chung, CNN
(CNN) — Every Lunar New Year, brands release zodiac animal-themed merchandise and items in the lucky color red. This year, there’s one product that has cut through all the noise: the Adidas Chinese Track Top.
It wasn’t explicitly marketed for the festive season, but has been unofficially dubbed the “Chinese New Year” or “Tang” jacket on TikTok and Instagram, where it’s been going viral over the past few months after the latest version debuted at Shanghai Fashion Week.
Initially only sold in China, and then a handful of Asian markets before being becoming available in Europe in February, they have since become a holy grail among Gen Z — and emblematic of young people’s growing embrace of all things China.
The jacket’s nickname notes its resemblance to the Tang suit, a historic garment tracing back to China’s Qing dynasty, with an earlier iteration, the “ma gua,” worn by horse riders from the mid 17th century. They share some key design details: ornamental, knotted toggles, known as frog buttons or “pankou,” and a standing Mandarin collar.
One video titled “POV: your dad just came back from China,” which shows a man handing the tops out to family members from a suitcase, has been watched over 2.6 million times; another of a young woman walking the streets in a dark gray version has raked in over 1 million views across TikTok and Instagram. “Flew to China for this viral jacket. Soo worth it,” reads the accompanying caption.
CNN called Adidas stores in several major Chinese cities to find the jackets were either completely sold out or only available in certain colors. Online resellers like StockX now carry them for as much as $400.
It’s not the first time the German sportswear giant has riffed on Chinese aesthetics, and the success of their latest jackets isn’t just due to the classic formula of hype and scarcity. They’ve have dropped at a fascinating intersection of identity, internet culture and even geopolitics.
In recent years, young people in China have championed the “xinzhongshi,” or “new Chinese style,” trend, which contemporizes traditional design and reflects wearers’ rising confidence in their national and cultural identity. The term has been used as a marketing tool on the country’s lucrative e-commerce platforms and has played out on its streets, where modern takes on centuries-old garments like the “mamianqun,” or horse-face skirt, have become an increasingly common sight. Chinese fashion designers like Samuel Gui Yang have meanwhile been subtly weaving “Chineseness” into their designs for over a decade, often to exquisite effect.
The Adidas jacket arrives “during the continuing rise of the New Chinese Style, and many longstanding questions and answers about how to express modern Chinese identity in fashion,” said Sarah Cheang, a design historian at the UK’s Royal College of Art. Cheang added that the design offers a refreshing alternative to “stereotypical dragon motifs,” with its resemblance to Tang suits helping to “move the associations away from aggression and Chinese mythology, and slightly more towards Chinese traditions of contemplation, scholarship and more internal balance practices such as tai chi.”
Adidas says the jacket was created by its Shanghai-based design team targeting Chinese consumers as part of a wider strategy to design in — and for — the country’s domestic market. The company has also worked on Chinese New Year collaborations with homegrown designers, such