The Christmas party is the occasion most likely to produce a garment worn once. It is bought in a hurry, in December, in a colour chosen for the month rather than for the person, and it spends the following year at the back of a wardrobe.

Solvable with three decisions.

Decide what kind of party it actually is

The phrase covers four quite different events and they want different things.

  • Office lunch or afternoon do. Smart work clothes with one festive element. Not a going-out outfit.
  • Office evening party at a venue. Cocktail — a midi or short dress, or good separates. The most common and the one most people overdress for.
  • Black tie work event. Rare, but it happens. Treat it as black tie.
  • Friends and family at home. Comfortable and smart. Nobody is standing all evening.

The single most common mistake is dressing for an evening party when the event is an afternoon one.

Buy the shape you already know works

December is a bad month to experiment. Shops are busy, returns are slow, and the deadline is fixed.

Go with a silhouette you have already worn successfully. If wrap dresses work on you, buy a wrap dress. If you live in tailored trousers, buy a good pair and a special top. The party is not the moment to discover whether a new shape suits you.

Put the occasion in the fabric, not the colour

This is the decision that determines whether it comes out again.

Sequins, velvet, satin and metallic thread all read as festive regardless of colour. A dress in your own palette in one of these fabrics is unmistakably a party outfit in December — and, in a plain colour that suits you, entirely wearable in March.

A red-and-green colour scheme, by contrast, is only ever December. So is anything with an explicit motif.

So: festive fabric, ordinary colour. That single swap is the difference between one wear and ten.

Choose the colour from your season palette rather than from what is in the shops — party lighting is unflattering and heavily photographed, which makes it exactly the occasion where a colour that genuinely suits you shows. The free quiz takes two questions.

Practical things that go wrong

Heat. Venues are hot, crowded and overheated by December standards. Heavy velvet with long sleeves in a packed room is a long evening. A layer you can remove beats a single heavy garment.

Standing. Most of these events have too few chairs. Shoes you can stand in for four hours matter more than shoes that look best for ten minutes.

Getting home. A coat that works over the outfit, and shoes or a bag that survive the journey. This is the part people plan for last and regret first.

Sequins and skin. Loose sequin dresses are usually lined for a reason. An unlined one is uncomfortable after an hour.

Doing it for less

Occasion wear is where the gap between what something looks like and what it costs is widest, because the fabrics that read as expensive — satin, velvet, sequin — are not expensive in themselves.

How to find a dupe sets out the search method, and spotting quality in a product photograph covers how to tell the good version from the cheap one when both are photographed the same way.