The short answer on How to Dress for a Gala: 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. Lining is what stops a cheap fabric reading as cheap. 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: Rebecca Vallance's Petunia Off The Shoulder Midi Dress at $224, and 7 For All Mankind's FLARED DRESS in Weightless Denim Hana at $288. The first is the easy entry point; the second is where the money goes. A dress that fits the shoulders can be taken in anywhere else. One that does not, cannot. Check where the waist seam sits on the model against your own proportions. A higher price mostly buys materials and finishing, and occasionally it buys nothing at all.

Let the dress be the loudest thing you own that day. A belt turns a shapeless dress into a deliberate one. From the second group, arcinaori.com.au's INDI DRESS KHAKI METALLIC ($430) 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 14 brands, $108 to $698, all in stock when this was written. We would not buy all of them, and neither should you. Lisa Says Gah's Soho Dress - Noir Garden at $108 is the low-risk way in, and samelosangeles.com's Long Sleeve Silk Jumpsuit (Cream) at $698 only makes sense if this is a category you already use constantly. On how to dress for a gala 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: buy the one you can picture using this week, not the one you are saving for later.