Dodger blue has been the club's signature since the Brooklyn years and survived the move west essentially intact, which is genuinely unusual. A 1955 Brooklyn jersey and a current Los Angeles one are recognisably the same colour, and that consistency is why the club's retro designs read so strongly — the colour is a fixed point while everything around it changes. White is the counterpart, used as the body on home designs and as trim on road. What separates editions is the script, the cap-style collar and the sleeve treatment rather than the palette, which is why a Dodgers listing is best judged from the product image.

Baseball's number culture is a retirement culture, and the Dodgers use it as a museum. #32 belongs to Sandy Koufax, #14 to Don Sutton, and #42 is retired throughout organised baseball for Jackie Robinson — which is a useful thing to know when reading a Dodgers listing, because a shirt carrying 42 is not an ordinary Dodgers number. With nine World Series, and two of them won back to back, the club has enough championship-era designs that the retro question is less about finding a gem and more about picking the decade you want to wear.