The LPA Revolve dress offer splits neatly into knit and not-knit, and the knit half is the more interesting one. A sweater dress that is genuinely fitted is harder to cut than a woven one, because the fabric will show every decision you made about the seams. The minis are doing something else entirely, closer to the early-2010s going-out uniform but with the proportions corrected. The lineage is late-nineties minimalism crossed with the sort of Los Angeles dressing that assumes a warm evening. Anyone shopping LPA for a party dress is usually choosing between those two moods rather than between colours.

Separates are where LPA is quietly more useful and much less obvious. A skort reads as a skirt in photographs and behaves like shorts for the eight hours you are actually wearing it, which is a real advantage. The skirts here sit at lengths that work with a flat shoe, which is the quiet change of the last two years. Tops carry the detail so the bottom half can stay plain, an inversion of how most people were dressing in 2019. Two pieces also give you a second outfit, which no dress can do.

LPA is a Revolve house label and it behaves exactly like one, which is fine as long as you know it. The construction is best on the knits and most variable on anything with heavy embellishment, so read the fabric before the photograph. The separates will get worn more than the dresses by a wide margin, every time, in every wardrobe. If you are buying one piece for a specific night, take the mini. If you are buying for a season, take the skirt.