The short answer on Sandals you Can Walk Miles In: 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. A moulded footbed takes about a week to break in and then lasts years. The groups below run from the decision that matters most to the ones you make afterwards.

What decides this is strap placement, footbed and heel height. Everything else is preference. Two from the first group show the range: Akira's AZALEA WANG ROTHKO WEDGE SANDAL IN BLACK at $90, and manymoons.com's Women's Embellished Sandals - Black Satin at $230. The first is the easy entry point; the second is where the money goes. A moulded footbed takes about a week to break in and then lasts years. A strap across the widest part of the foot is what stops slipping, not a tighter buckle. A higher price mostly buys materials and finishing, and occasionally it buys nothing at all.

A flat sandal reads dressier with a longer hem. From the second group, Akira's AZALEA WANG NEWTON BLOCK CHOCOLATE SANDAL ($65) 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, sandals, 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 sandals here from 12 brands, $50 to $495, all in stock when this was written. We would not buy all of them, and neither should you. dolcevita.com's DIXI SANDALS BROWN SUEDE at $50 is the low-risk way in, and simkhai.com's Elin Shell Beaded Sandal at $495 only makes sense if this is a category you already use constantly. On sandals you can walk miles in 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.