The short answer on Mules with Crystal Strap: 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. A higher price mostly buys better materials and finishing, not a better result. The groups below run from the decision that matters most to the ones you make afterwards.

What decides this is quality, finish and how often you will reach for it. Everything else is preference. Two from the first group show the range: ALOHAS's Aven Mule Patent Pale Yellow Leather Loafers at $160, and ALOHAS's Aven Mule Vintage Effect Brown Leather Loafers at $160. The first is the easy entry point; the second is where the money goes. Read the product details and the size before the marketing copy. A higher price mostly buys better materials and finishing, not a better result. A higher price mostly buys materials and finishing, and occasionally it buys nothing at all.

Keep the palette to two colours and let texture do the rest. From the second group, manymoons.com's Studded Mules - Dark Cocoa ($170) is the one that earns its place, because it works in more than one context without being restyled. The third group is smaller, and it is there 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 13 brands, $50 to $720, all in stock when this was written. We would not buy all of them, and neither should you. shopakira.com's AKIRA COOLCAT SILVER CROC BLOCK HEEL MULE SANDAL at $50 is the low-risk way in, and La Garçonne's Faux Fur Lined Pointe Mule at $720 only makes sense if this is a category you already use constantly. On mules with crystal strap 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.