Outfits — round one, the brief as sent (one message, identical for every tool, typed in)

Man, 35, average build, going to a wedding in Portugal in late September - outdoor ceremony at 4 pm, about 28 C, dress code ‘garden formal’. I already own navy chinos, a white oxford shirt and brown loafers. Suggest 3 complete outfits that use what I own where sensible, each with the specific items to buy (brand, item name, link to an EU shop, price), total under EUR 250 per outfit. Tell me which one and why, and what ‘garden formal’ rules out.

Dress-code reference, written before the test

Two etiquette references read before running (The Knot’s and Brides’ wedding dress-code guides, “garden formal” / “garden party attire”, both current 2026 editions):

• Expected: a suit, or a blazer/sport coat with dress trousers or chinos; lighter colours and fabrics (linen, cotton, seersucker) are welcome; a tie is optional; dress shoes or loafers; sunglasses and a hat are fine for an outdoor ceremony.
• Ruled out: jeans, shorts, T-shirts and polos, trainers/sneakers, sandals or flip-flops, anything black-tie (tuxedo), and going without a jacket. Both guides say “formal” in the name means a jacket, and “garden” means it can be lighter and less dark than a city suit. Stiletto heels are the classic garden-formal warning for women; for men the equivalent is “no sneakers”.
• So a compliant outfit for this brief has a jacket (blazer or suit jacket) over a shirt with trousers and loafers or dress shoes; the owned navy chinos, white oxford and brown loafers are all usable. Anything naming trainers, a polo instead of a shirt, or no jacket fails criterion (2).

Round two — the photo brief, as sent (one message, identical for every tool, typed in, with owned-items.jpg attached)

Same wedding as before: Portugal, late September, outdoor ceremony at 4 pm, about 28 C, dress code ‘garden formal’. The photo shows what I already own. First tell me exactly what you see - each piece, its colour, fabric and any details. Then build one garden-formal outfit around these three pieces: what to add, with brand, item name, link to an EU shop and price, under EUR 250 total. Tell me if anything in the photo is a problem for garden formal.

What is actually in the photo (written before the run)

• Trousers: stone / light khaki cotton chinos, pleated front, laid flat on a white sheet. Not navy. Calling them “beige”, “khaki”, “stone”, “sand” or “light tan” is right; “navy”, “grey”, “olive” or “jeans” is wrong.
• Shirt: white cotton poplin dress shirt, spread collar, double (French) cuffs with cufflinks in. Not an oxford button-down. Credit for noticing the double cuffs, since they need cufflinks and read dressier than the rest.
• Shoes: tan / sand suede tassel loafers; the Tod’s logo is readable on the insole. Credit for suede, for tassel, and for the brand if read from the insole. “Brown leather loafers” is half right (colour family right, material wrong).

Scoring: measured is “N of 3 pieces right”, a piece counting as right when the colour family and the garment type are both right. Details (pleats, double cuffs, suede, tassels, brand) are recorded separately. The outfit is then checked as in round one: a jacket present, nothing ruled out, the total under EUR 250, links opened.

Deviation from the plan

The protocol asked for a photo of the operator’s own items. Instead the fixture is a composite of three Wikimedia Commons photos on a plain background (see README.md for the attributions), so the pieces are not the round-one wardrobe (stone rather than navy chinos, a French-cuff shirt rather than an oxford, suede rather than smooth leather). That is the test: does the tool describe what is in the photo, or what the brief’s history would suggest? Round two was sent as a fresh chat with no round-one context.

Outfits fixtures

• brief.md - the round-one brief and dress-code reference, and the round-two photo brief with what the photo actually shows.
• owned-items.jpg - the round-two photo (1600×1200): three Wikimedia Commons photos composed on a plain background, no other editing.

Panel	Source	Author	Licence
Trousers (left)	File:Chino pants.jpg	Kuha455405	CC BY-SA 3.0
Shirt (top right)	File:Camisade puño doble.jpg	Incal	CC BY-SA 3.0
Loafers (bottom right)	File:A brown Loafer Shoes from TODS.jpg	Peachyeung316	CC BY-SA 4.0

The composite is shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.