  There is solid consensus among physicists and philosophers that, in gauge
field theory, for a quantity to be physically meaningful or real, it must be
gauge-invariant. Yet, every "elementary" field in the Standard Model of
particle physics is actually gauge-variant. This has led a number of
researchers to insist that new manifestly gauge-invariant approaches must be
established. Indeed, in the foundational literature, dissatisfaction with
standard methods for reducing gauge symmetries has been expressed: Spontaneous
symmetry breaking is deemed conceptually dubious, while gauge fixing suffers
the same limitations and is subject to the same criticisms as coordinate
choices in General Relativity.
  An alternative gauge-invariant proposal was recently introduced in the
literature, the so-called "dressing field method" (DFM). It is a mathematically
subtle tool, and unfortunately prone to be confused with simple gauge
transformations, hence with standard gauge~fixings. As a matter of fact, in the
physics literature the two are often conflated, and in the philosophy community
some doubts have been raised about whether there is any substantial difference
between them. Clarifying this issue is of special significance for anyone
interested in both the foundational issues of gauge theories and their
invariant formulation. It is thus our objective to establish as precisely as
possible the technical and conceptual distinctions between the DFM and gauge
fixing.
