How to pick a multipack you will wear all three of

The economics of a multipack only work if you wear all of it. A three pack where one shirt never comes out of the drawer is a two pack that cost you a third more, and the shirt that gets abandoned is almost always predictable before you order.

Count the neutrals you already own

Nearly every set in this catalog contains a black, a white or a grey. That is sound design, since the neutral is what makes the pack wearable as a set. It is also the shirt you are most likely to already have four of.

If you own plenty of plain black tanks, a pack built around black is delivering two useful shirts. A pack like White, Brown and Khaki, or Black, Green and Wine Red, spreads the value across three. The count on the label does not change. What you get out of it does.

The third shade is the one to interrogate

Sets tend to follow a shape: a neutral, a safe colour and a bolder one. The safe colour gets worn immediately. The bold one either becomes the shirt you reach for or it sits there. Look at it on its own, away from the other two, and ask whether you would have bought that single shirt.

• Names with a modifier are the ones to look at hardest. Neon Orange Red, Coffee Grey and Gray Brown all sit between two obvious colours and photograph towards whichever the lighting favours.
• Shades that only work with one thing you own are a bet on that one thing staying in rotation.
• A saturated colour in a rayon blend fades faster than the neutral beside it, so the bold shirt in a pack also ages fastest.

Match the pack to the week, not to the outfit

These are shirts for regular days, so the useful test is a week rather than a look. Five working days, two of them likely to involve something more presentable. A pack covers a week well when it gives you at least one shirt that reads tidy, one that reads casual and one that goes under a layer without fighting it.

Judged that way, a three pack of near neighbours fails even when every shade in it is nice. Three warm neutrals give you one look repeated three times. Two neutrals and a colour give you a week.

When a bigger pack is worth it

The four and five shirt sets are the only ones that cover a full week from a single order, and the oversized tee sets carry five shades. The catch is the same one, multiplied: five chances for a shade to be one you will not wear. Look at the full colour list before treating the larger count as better value, because a five pack with two dead shirts is worse than a three pack with none.

1. Read the full colour name. It spells out every shirt in the pack.
2. Subtract any shade you already own several of.
3. Ask whether the remaining shirts still cover a working week.
4. If the answer is two shirts out of three, look at a different colourway of the same cut. There are usually eight more.