The short answer on Combat Boots: pick one anchor piece, keep the palette to two colours, and let the shoes decide how formal the whole thing reads. 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. Measure your calf before buying anything with a shaft above the ankle. The groups below run from the decision that matters most to the ones you make afterwards.

What decides this is shaft height, calf width and sole grip. Everything else is preference. Two from the first group show the range: fredasalvador.com's ACE LACE UP BOOT at $550, and staud.clothing's HENRY COMBAT BOOT | TABAC SUEDE at $595. The first is the easy entry point; the second is where the money goes. A stacked heel walks better than a block of the same height. Measure your calf before buying anything with a shaft above the ankle. A higher price mostly buys materials and finishing, and occasionally it buys nothing at all.

Boots want either a skimming trouser or nothing below the knee at all. From the second group, sperry.com's Tahoe Lug Boot ($40) 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, boots, 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 boots here from 13 brands, $40 to $800, all in stock when this was written. We would not buy all of them, and neither should you. sperry.com's Tahoe Lug Boot at $40 is the low-risk way in, and Norma Kamali's R13 HIGH MOTO BOOTS at $800 only makes sense if this is a category you already use constantly. On combat boots 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.