Styling Bottega Grasp Belt is mostly a question of proportion, and the rest follows from there. One piece should lead and the rest should stay quiet; two competing pieces read as an accident. Proportion does more than colour: volume on top wants something narrow below, and the reverse. Buy to your trouser waist, not your natural waist. The groups below run from the decision that matters most to the ones you make afterwards.

What decides this is width, buckle and leather quality. Everything else is preference. Two from the first group show the range: Varley's Deena Leather Belt at $154, and Cynthia Rowley's Metallic Scallop Belt at $175. The first is the easy entry point; the second is where the money goes. Buy to your trouser waist, not your natural waist. A higher price mostly buys materials and finishing, and occasionally it buys nothing at all.

Match the belt to the shoe and the outfit reads finished. From the second group, lagarconne.com's Leather Scout Belt ($195) is the one that earns its place, because it works in more than one context without being restyled. The third group is smaller and deliberately narrower, belts, for the decisions you make after the main one. None of this needs the whole group. One piece from each is usually enough.

There are 20 belts here from 11 brands, $35 to $595, all in stock when this was written. We would not buy all of them, and neither should you. Princess Polly's Qwin Chain Belt Gold at $36 is the low-risk way in, and La Garçonne's Classic Belt - Dark Brown at $595 only makes sense if this is a category you already use constantly. On bottega grasp belt specifically: the difference between the top and the bottom of this list is real but smaller than the price gap suggests. Nothing here is included because it is famous, and price is not used as a proxy for quality anywhere on this page. If you take one thing away: one considered purchase beats three hedged ones.