The short answer on Bronze Cocktail Dress: pick one anchor piece, keep the palette to two colours, and let the shoes decide how formal the whole thing reads. Dress codes are mostly about fabric and coverage rather than length. The safest read is one considered piece and quiet everything else, which also survives photographs better. A dress that fits the shoulders can be taken in anywhere else. One that does not, cannot. The groups below run from the decision that matters most to the ones you make afterwards.

What decides this is shoulder fit, length and how the fabric moves. Everything else is preference. Two from the first group show the range: Fleur Du Mal's Pansy Jacquard Ruched Bust Dress at $395, and L Space's Samantha Dress - Limoncello Stripe at $123. The first is the considered buy; the second is the one to start with. Check where the waist seam sits on the model against your own proportions. Lining is what stops a cheap fabric reading as cheap. A higher price mostly buys materials and finishing, and occasionally it buys nothing at all.

A belt turns a shapeless dress into a deliberate one. Let the dress be the loudest thing you own that day. From the second group, L Space's Seabreeze Dress - Vine Vignette ($150) 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, dresses, 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 dresses here from 11 brands, $65 to $620, all in stock when this was written. We would not buy all of them, and neither should you. kennethcole.com's Asymmetrical Hem Cowl Neck Dress at $65 is the low-risk way in, and destree.com's Velvet dots dress - Rust at $620 only makes sense if this is a category you already use constantly. On bronze cocktail dress 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: pay for the thing that touches your body and economise on the thing that sits on top of it.