I don't want us to just hash over silly examples that are easy to nitpick. My point is that if you have an inventory, you don't have normalized items. You have "realized" items that have, in fact, copied out the colors and other design choices out in a way that cannot cascade on edit.

Stated differently, if the data can always cascade out with editing, than yeah, it should probably be normalized. If it is a design choice that gets fixed on application, it can be argued that it should be copied out when it can't be changed.