The Completist

The shirt exists in nine colours, you own six, and you can name the three that are missing in the order you intend to get them. Ecru before sand. The row is the unit, and a gap in it reads to you the way a missing tooth reads to everyone else.

The arithmetic is unkind. You wear three of the nine. The other six hang there so the set is whole, and the set is a thing you invented, which means the shop has spent four seasons selling you your own idea back at full price.

What saves you is depth. When the line is discontinued you will hold the deepest run of it in the city, and the person who bought one will come to you to ask what the ecru was actually called.