Love The Bear? You Can Get Your Own ‘Chicagoland Berf’ T-shirt
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The second season of Hulu’s The Bear dropped like a heap of chuck in a vat of hot oil last week, with a massive audience cementing it as a hit. Everyone’s craving Italian beef, lusting over midwestern chefs, and absorbing the food, the gab, and the groove of Chicago–or at least one version of it.
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Something else the show’s audience is after? The staff of The Original Beef of Chicagoland’s unassuming wardrobe, seen all around the fictional River North neighborhood restaurant “The Original Beef of Chicagoland.” Now, at least one of those duds can be yours.
Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), the headstrong cousin of the restaurant’s owner, Carmy (Jeremy Allen-White), sports a T-shirt that says “The Original Berf of Chicagoland” from the beginning of the show, a misspelling that goes unaddressed until season two. It’s a printing mistake, Richie says, “a collector’s item.”
The new season may have only just hit streaming platforms, but independent sellers on websites like Etsy and Redbubble have already begun reproducing versions of Richie’s formerly one-of-a-kind uniform. 18 episodes in and The Bear is jockeying to enter the pantheon of shows that become immortal through graphic tees forever — e.g. The Office and Friends.
The Original Berf of Chicagoland Shirt
Buy Now on etsy $30.44
Buy Now on redbubble $Prices vary
The Bear doesn’t just appeal to Hot Topic sensibilities. Streetwear enthusiasts were ravenous for the white t-shirt Allen-White sports for most of the show, usually peeking from behind a blue apron. It’s the kind of rare white tee that looks good covered in grease or tucked into chinos. It’s the Merz B. Schwanen 2-Thread Heavyweight, the show’s costume designers, Cristina Spiridakis and Courtney Wheeler, told SPY last year, going for about $95.
It’s one thing that demonstrates The Bear, stealthily, is a menswear show.
Nimble style pervades the world of The Bear, from Carmy’s love of selvege denim to a “Black Ivy” shirt worn by The Original Beef’s cake chef (Lionel Boyce), seemingly a nod to the 2021 book documenting Black Americans’ influence on menswear in the 20th century.
And that’s at least partly intentional, Wheeler said.
“When I was doing the research and talking to chefs that I know and falling into a research rabbit hole, finding images of people that felt akin to Carmy, this sort of very common kitchen look kept coming up,” she said. “The white T-shirt, the black Dickey, the Birkenstocks.”
“Berf” and “Beef” tees both cost around $20 to $30.
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