What you wear to a concert at Madison Square Garden depends far less on the artist than on who you are sitting with. The Garden is cold in every month of the year, the walk from Penn Station to your seat is longer than it looks, and you will stand for most of the night. Those three facts decide the outfit before the tour poster does.

So we built this three ways, because the twenty three year old on the floor, the mother of two in the 200 level and the woman hosting a client in a suite are not solving the same problem. One needs an outfit that survives a general admission crowd and costs less than the ticket. One needs to look expensive while holding somebody's water bottle. One needs to be photographed in a box and still be credible in a meeting the next morning.

Everything below is real, in stock and priced. The rest is styling.

Start with the shoe. Every other decision is reversible and this one is not, because you will be standing on concrete through an opening act you did not choose. A block heel, a boot or a proper flat all work. A stiletto in a general admission crowd does not.

Second, the bag. Small, structured, and a strap you can wear across the body. It moves faster through security and it keeps both hands free, which matters enormously if you are the adult in the group.

Third, layers. The concourse runs colder than the seats and the seats run colder than you expect. Something with sleeves that you can carry.

Fourth, fabric. Satin, sequins and knits photograph well in low light. Delicate silk and a crowded floor are a bad pairing.

Fifth, commit to one loud thing. Sequins or feathers or a strong colour, then let everything else stay quiet. Three loud things read as a costume.

The test for every piece here was whether it goes back into a real wardrobe on Monday. A sequinned jersey top works under a blazer. A leopard shearling is a coat you own for a decade. Black leather trousers are a Friday night for the next two years. The pieces that fail that test, the novelty and the polyester, are the ones sitting unworn in everybody's closet already.

Buy in this order. Shoe first, since it sets the silhouette and the price ceiling. Then the piece that carries the shine. Then the layer, which is where it is worth spending, because the coat is what people see in the concourse and in every photograph taken before the lights go down.

Sizing note on the mass market pieces. Zara and Mango run small and short through the shoulder, so size up on anything fitted. H&M runs long. Charles & Keith footwear runs narrow and true to length.

Sale prices move fastest on the sequins. If a size is showing, take it.

We would spend the money on outerwear and shoes and almost nowhere else. Nobody at a concert can see the difference between a five hundred dollar top and a fifty dollar top from twenty rows back, but everybody sees the coat, and you are wearing the shoes for six hours whether you enjoy them or not.

The suite looks here are quietly the best value on the page, because they all go to work the next morning. The Ingénue grid is the one we would send a friend to first, and the fact that a whole look lands under a hundred and eighty dollars is not a compromise, it is the assignment done properly.

Who this is not for: anyone hoping a feather boa will survive the second song. It will not. Wear the feather as trim.

If you take one thing away, buy the shoe you can stand in for three hours and build the outfit upward from there.