A top executive was fired after being caught having an affair on China's version of TikTok. Now, the $85 dress his mistress wore in the video is selling out.
A top business executive was sacked in China after a video of him with his mistress went viral.
Chinese users rushed to buy some 4,000 pieces of the pink dress the mistress wore.
"It is really ridiculous and ironic," one Chinese user said on the mistress' newfound fame.
A top business executive in China was fired after being caught having an affair with his coworker in a viral video posted on the Chinese version of TikTok. But people online are now obsessed with his mistress — with thousands buying the exact dress she wore in the video.
After the video went viral on Douyin in June, Hu Jiyong was terminated as the executive director and general manager of the state-owned company Huanqiu Contracting and Engineering Corporation, per a company statement published on June 7. The company said that Hu is also being investigated by its disciplinary committee.
The original video, posted by a local street photographer, has since been deleted. In one copy posted on TikTok by the Singapore news website Today, Hu was shown holding hands with his coworker. She has only been identified by her surname "Dong," according to the state-owned outlet Sixth Tone.
The couple was shown wearing matching pink outfits in Chengdu, a province in China. Hu was in a pink polo shirt, and Dong was wearing the now-iconic body-hugging pink dress.
In the video, Dong was also shown carrying a Lady Dior handbag, which cost at least $5,000 in the US.
Several users dubbed it the "mistress" and "dismissal" dress on Weibo, a Chinese platform similar to Twitter. The Weibo thread discussing Dong's dress has garnered at least 17 million views.
Thousands of people then rushed to buy Dong's dress, which was sold by a vendor on Taobao, an online shopping platform, according to the Singapore newspaper The Straits Times. The dress cost 618 Chinese yuan, or around $85.
Dong's newfound fans purchased around 1,000 pieces of the dress overnight. By June 8, 4,000 pieces were sold, per ST.
One Weibo user shared why Chinese users were so enamored by Hu and Dong's illicit love affair: "The male protagonist is rich, and the female protagonist is fair-skinned, beautiful, and long-legged."
But another user criticized the people who purchased the dress, writing: "A beautifully-dressed mistress, everyone followed suit. The same dress was sold out. It is really ridiculous and ironic."
Huanqiu Contracting and Engineering Corporation did not immediately respond to Insider's requests for comment.
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