The house came with a library. Nobody bought the books. They arrived with the walls, in the way that libraries in houses like this always do, three generations of good intentions in matching leather. Nobody here has read them and nobody is going to. That is not a confession. It is a way of life.
The print
The engraving on the back is a seated figure with an open book and no intention of finishing it. WELL READ in tall serif, and the honest footnote in small print: the library was included.
It is the shirt for people who own more books than they have read and have made peace with it. The kind who buy the novel because of the cover, carry it to the pool, open it at page twelve, and spend the afternoon looking at the water instead. Being well read was never about the reading. It was about the chair, the light and the fact that nobody was going to ask.
How to wear it
With a book you will not open, on a bench by the water, in the hour before dinner. White for the terrace, black for the reading chair after dark, with a lamp on and nothing on the page.