attributes vs categories for sorting

Hello Sam, You could do that just by category

All your Waterproof Jackets under a single [CATEGORY]
You should install a search plugin i.e Yith Ajax Search ;
where one could search items under a certain category.

As for filtering, comes [ATTRIBUTES]
You could see at your own provided image, the left sidebar is the Attributes, You should then create Size, Colors as [ATTRIBUTES] so when people click on the Category[Waterproof Jackets] , they could filter out just the right size and colors they want.

Put it simply, [ATTRIBUTES] is the options of the product while [CATEGORIES] is the basket of the products. So there’s no VS since they should work together.

If this clears up your questions, please mark it as resolved.