Fuzzy coats have been everywhere this winter, from vintage fur to Penny Lane-inspired outerwear. But one specific coat has been spotted numerous times already this fashion month: Prada’s autumn/winter 2014 red shearling-trimmed leather jacket. In fact, while scrolling through Vogue’s resident street-style photographer Phil Oh’s snaps from New York Fashion Week, I noticed two show-goers wearing the statement piece on the very same day, before spotting fashion critic and collector Alexander Fury sporting the same jacket on Instagram.

Regular Vogue readers will know that fashion features director Julia Hobbs is a long-standing fan, first purchasing the coat after it hit the runways a decade ago. “If there’s one piece that defines my entire wardrobe, it’s this coat,” she says. “It was my first major ready-to-wear purchase – I remember running from my desk at Vogue to the Prada store on Bond Street when I found out the collection had dropped. I’ve had other fashion editors offer to buy it off my back!”

Several iterations of the shearling coat appeared in Miuccia Prada’s autumn/winter 2014 collection, including a short and long version in black and red, and another featuring a yellow collar. It also comes in purple and yellow, yellow and red, and black and brown – although the black and red colourway is perhaps the most memorable, making it a collector’s item to this very day. “The black leather, red sheepskin combo is, to me, the platonic ideal of a coat,” reflects brand manager, consultant and writer Emma Hope Allwood, who owns no fewer than three coats from the collection. “There is no item in my wardrobe that makes me feel as entirely myself – or that inspires more adulation from complete strangers.”

The archive piece undoubtedly taps into this season’s one-and-done trend, whereby, as my colleague Daniel Rodgers explains, a coat serves as the entire outfit. It’s also a testament to the status assigned to trophy vintage nowadays, which is considered just as cool (if not more so) than fresh-off-the-runway looks. “It speaks to our desire to own items that feel special and rare in an age of same-day delivery and constant trend churning,” Allwood continues, noting that she first set her sights on Prada’s statement outerwear back when she was a student. “To me, this coat symbolises my own journey in the fashion industry – it means a lot to be able to buy myself the pieces I once could only look at and dream of.”

Thanks to its holy grail status, it’s not easy to get your hands on a Prada autumn/winter 2014 coat – plus it’ll cost you a pretty penny (current prices on the resale market are around the £5K mark). If you are able to save up and hunt one down, though, you can be sure that you’re getting your hands on a forever item that’s already secured its place in fashion history.