The short answer on Coach Cross Slides: 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 strap across the widest part of the foot is what stops slipping, not a tighter buckle. Worth saying plainly: our partner brands do not stock coach cross slides itself, so what follows is the sandals we would actually put with it rather than links we cannot stand behind. 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: Varley's Latona Sandal at $268, and Cole Haan's Women's ØriginalGrand Peyton Flatform Sandals at $50. The first is the considered buy; the second is the one to start with. 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, Veronica Beard's Tia Buckle Sandal ($395) 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, $26 to $398, all in stock when this was written. We would not buy all of them, and neither should you. Spanx's SPANXsupersmooth® Day to Date Night Lace Thong at $26 is the low-risk way in, and Retrofete's Lucio Sandal at $398 only makes sense if this is a category you already use constantly. To be straight about it, if you came here only for coach cross slides, this page will not solve that. It will solve what goes around it. 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: one considered purchase beats three hedged ones.