Carmy's white t-shirt and style on The Bear have their own fan base

FX's hit series The Bear deals with a lot of topics: complicated family dynamics, grief, toxic work environments, Chicago, career obsession, and, of course, food. But for some people, it's simply a show about clothes set in and around a Chicago restaurant.

The show's third season has already given style-obsessed viewers plenty to eat. In the first episode, Carmen Carmy Berzatto, played by Jeremy Allen White, wears a distressed Barbour Ogston jacket in olive in a flashback; later in the season, he wears a cotton deck jacket from the Ralph Lauren sub-brand inspired by RRL workwear. J. Crew has released a capsule collection consisting of a hat, T-shirt, sweatshirt and work jacket featuring the logo of the fictional company owned by the show's Fak brothers, played by Matty Matheson and Ricky Staffieri.

Unlike Sex and the City, which featured Carrie Bradshaw's Fendi baguette bags, and HBO's Succession, which featured its ridiculously roomy Burberry bag, The Bear wasn't designed with major fashion ties.

“I didn’t expect that at all,” said Courtney Wheeler, the show’s costume designer. “Our show isn’t overtly about fashion, like Sex and the City or Emily in Paris. It’s about what we think the world is that these characters live in. The fact that people are responding to it is really cool, but that wasn’t necessarily our intention.”

But since the series debuted in 2022, some have made it their mission to understand what the characters are up to, particularly lead character Carmy, a wounded but fiery chef who transforms his deceased brother's humble Italian beef sandwich shop into a temple of gastronomy.

Online sleuths, for example, tracked down the exact plain white t-shirt that Mr. Allen White wears on the show for all three seasons: men's loop t-shirt 215 Made by German company Merz b. Schwanen, it retails for about $85. The company, which opened its first U.S. store earlier this year, was unaware that the shirt would be introduced and saw a surge in interest, leading to the company's website temporarily going down.

Similarly, a patchwork wool jacket from the cult Danish brand NN07 that Mr. Allen White wore in the first season has since become a fetish item in men’s wardrobes. Ms. Wheeler recalls a salesperson at Bloomingdales removing it from a mannequin so he could show it off during a fitting, and Mr. White turned to it. Once identified on a menswear forum on Reddit, the jacket, a style known as the Gael sold out; it has since been restocked twice, both times within 30 minutes, wrote Mikkel Hammershj, a press representative for NN07.

I would say there is a very direct effect, Mr. Hammershj added.

While character and plot drive the costume design, it’s not a stretch to make fashion a leitmotif of The Bear, because by virtue of the profession, aesthetics and craftsmanship are important in the food world. “I think Carmy is the kind of person who’s always wanted to go out,” Wheeler added. “She’s the kind of person who’s always wanted to be out there.”

Actors and creators also seem to be exploring their own styles, including Mr. Allen White, whose personal style He has been closely followed, recently modeling in a much-talked-about Calvin Klein underwear ad; his co-star Ayo Edebiri, who plays Sydney Syd Adamu, a red-carpet favorite in part because she has worked with the stylist Danielle Goldberg and is currently on the cover of the latest issue of Vanity Fair; Mr. Matheson, a chef and executive producer of the show who has his own clothing line, Rosa Rugosa; and the show’s creator, Christopher Storer, who has a penchant for Thom Browne and the Drakes brand. “Sometimes I’ll just go up to his room to ask him a quick question,” Ms. Wheeler said of working with Mr. Storer, “and we end up spending 45 minutes talking about loafers.”

Some fashion items have even become plot points, like a stash of Big E Levis jeans so valuable that Carmy uses them to pay off a debt, or a Thom Browne-designed chef jacket that is gifted to Syd in a dramatic reveal in season two.

Asked if she was speaking more to those who watch the show for the fashion, Wheeler said: “There's a little bit of that, but we don't want to force it.”

And while these pieces may spark reactions online, Wheeler said the important thing is that the clothes serve the story. When you try on clothes and everything comes together, everything clicks and you start to feel like a real character, that's when you're like, 'Oh yeah, this is it,'” she said.

And while menswear fans continue to clamor for the exact style of pants, T-shirts and outerwear Carmy wears on the show, Wheeler pointed out one very important detail. A lot of the stuff you see on TV, she said, we adapted.