For times when you might want a beautiful day dress or eveningwear, I feel like the options are cheap stretch mesh dresses from fast fashion (which only looks good on model bodies, and even then the disposable material isn't elegant) or very high end, astronomically expensive labels ($10,000 ). The middle ground is not really populated.

At least there's Myer and David Jones in-person, which i've been happy with, and Forever New and House of CB do the middle ground of $300 prices but searching online only returns Shein and Temu ads that cater to a 20 year old going clubbing. And i've heard a lot about e-tailers sending damaged/used goods out to customers.

I feel sorry for the people who need wedding guest attire and their options are thin polyester dresses because that's what's available. When ideally these guests could save up for one quality dress with tailoring and construction and change the styling/accessories when re-wearing. I'm not saying people need royal wedding quality clothes, but I sew and creating nice lines and shapes isn't rocket science (you can make a 1950s style cocktail dress for ~$120 if the fabric is $40/m from a specialist fabric store, and the pattern might be $15 from Spotlight but obviously not everyone can or wants to make their wardrobe), it's just the clothing companies are happy to outfit their customers in ugly and tawdry, ill fitting pieces for bargain bin prices.