How we choose

Every piece on this site is chosen to complete one specific look for one specific night. That is a narrower job than "best clutch", and it produces different answers — the right bag for a masquerade is the one that holds a mask, which is not the bag that wins a general roundup.

The look comes first

We decide what the night calls for — the weight of the fabric, the depth of the colour, what the light in the room will do to it — and then find pieces that serve it. We do not start from a list of products that pay well and write a look around them.

The illustrations are illustrations

The image at the top of each look is rendered by us. It shows the register of the night: the silhouette, the palette, the mood. It is not a photograph of the products, and the garments in it are not for sale. Every piece you can actually buy is listed separately, with its own manufacturer image, its own name and its own link. We label the illustration on every page so the distinction is never left to inference.

What we will not do

• Claim to have tested something we have not. Where a judgement comes from published measurements or from a maker's own specification, we say which.
• Print a price. Amazon's prices move hourly; a number in an article is a number that is already wrong.
• Fill a look with four pieces when three are enough, because a longer list earns more.
• Recommend a product category that does not survive the night. If the honest answer is that the cheap version is fine, that is the answer you get.

Corrections

If something here is wrong, tell us at [email protected] and we will fix it and say that we did.