Oktoberfest t-shirts for Bavarian guys

Last week, we showed you various types of Oktoberfest t-shirts and tops for the girls – of the non-hen-party variety, of course! And so if you’d feel more comfortable heading to Munich in a t-shirt than in a full-blown Bavarian shirt and lederhosen, but don’t want to get mistaken for the lost member of the Oktoberfest’s most drunken stag party, here are our recommendations for men’s casual wear on top.

Essentially, there are two types of men’s Oktoberfest t-shirts: long-sleeved and short-sleeve. The best among them have enough detail and traditional features to mark them out from just any type of t-shirt, but also offer you the comfort and combination possibilities of a completely normal top: i.e. you won’t need to wear a pair of leather breeches for them to look acceptable! In fact, they’re perfect if you’re a little sceptical about lederhosen (and if you’re a first-time, you might well be), because they suit shorts, jeans, and indeed the new “gateway drug” style denim shorts in lederhosen look.

The long-sleeved variants can also be combined with real lederhosen: they look slightly like old-fashioned farmers shirts, but are spruced up with details like staghorn buttons, two-tone hems and collars, and sewn-on patches or prints either on the upper arm or where you would usually find the chest pocket on a dress shirt of the kind worn with lederhosn.

Short-sleeved Oktoberfest t-shirts require some thought to make sure they don’t look either like just any other tee or – worse – like stag wear gone wrong. We like the new 2014 variants with large-scale print and German that sound nice and manly, such as “Hirschblut” – deer blood – or “Bergfeuer” for mountain fire. Then there are the pro-versions with Bavarian dialect phrases such as “Sunnda g’wand”, which means “Sunday best” and will draw an ironic smile from experts given that, of course, it’s a casual t-shirt.

See, you really can wear an Oktoberfest t-shirt that will have locals laughing with, not at you.