Tessa asked, and I had to put her off and think about it:
What kind of top does one wear with a crimson velvet pleated skirt with pink lace at the bottom?
Honestly, my first thought was, “None!”, as in, “get rid of it”; but I have seen enough of Tessa to believe that she has good taste. The skirt must be worth wearing.
So the birthday card my sister had gotten me provided a little bit of inspiration. I’ll try to explain:
1) First of all, establish a rhythm with the colors. I assume the crimson and the pink relate to each other, choose a third color that relates to the crimson in the same way the crimson relates to the pink. It could even be black.
2) The texture of the top and its length you will have to choose according to YOU. Likewise the shape. However, the visual weight of the fabric of the top should be, in my opinion, either at least as heavy as the velvet or half-way between the velvet and the lace.
3) Now add heaps of delicate necklaces, or a scarf, incorporating both the color of the lace and the color of your hair.
4) Shoes: How does one go about matching crimson and pink? Not. Wear a black, fitted, knee-high boot, as long as there is some other black in the outfit; or choose a soft neutral that relates to the hair-color (a little darker is fine for shoes). Knowing that Tessa is fair-skinned, I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest something like this: 
Does that help? We’d love to see a picture of the outfit you end up with.
Rebecca- this is tremendously helpful! Thank you for believing that I have good taste even though I am attempting to wear a crimson pleated velvet skirt. 😉 My hair is very dark (nearly black), so a dark top may be just the thing to tie it together. I’ve put a picture of the skirt in question up over at my blog. 😀 Thanks again for helping a poor girl out!
Rebecca, styles I’d consider wearing with this skirt would include a black or white tuxedo style shirt, a black (ideally cashmere) twin set, or black on black beaded sweater.
I think if you had the right pink you could wear a pink sweater, or sweater set, too. The trick is to match the pink as closely as possible to the lace — provided it goes with your coloring. It wouldn’t have to be exact colour as the lace is at the bottom on the skirt only (as I understand it).
And I’d wear black pumps.