The short answer on Androgynous Fashion: pick one anchor piece, keep the palette to two colours, and let the shoes decide how formal the whole thing reads. Repeat one element, a metal, a texture or a colour, and an outfit looks deliberate. One piece should lead and the rest should stay quiet; two competing pieces read as an accident. Check the shoulder seam first; a coat that pulls there will never sit right. The groups below run from the decision that matters most to the ones you make afterwards.

What decides this is shell fabric, lining and where the hem lands. Everything else is preference. Two from the first group show the range: L Space's Core Top - Cream-Natural at $99, and J.McLaughlin's Signature Tee in Modern Dressage at $68. The first is the considered buy; the second is the one to start with. A coat you cannot layer a knit under is a coat for one month of the year. Weight matters more than fill number; a heavy coat gets left at home. A higher price mostly buys materials and finishing, and occasionally it buys nothing at all.

Buy the coat for the clothes you own, not the clothes you plan to buy. From the second group, Posse's HARLAN VEST ($270) 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 pieces here from 14 brands, $49 to $417, all in stock when this was written. We would not buy all of them, and neither should you. meshki.com.au's Guinevere Lace And Mesh Maxi Skirt - Lilac at $49 is the low-risk way in, and ramybrook.com's Isley Printed Strapless Midi Dress at $417 only makes sense if this is a category you already use constantly. Read as a set, they get you close to Androgynous Fashion without any single purchase being compulsory. 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.