The short answer on Tomato Red Top: pick one anchor piece, keep the palette to two colours, and let the shoes decide how formal the whole thing reads. One piece should lead and the rest should stay quiet; two competing pieces read as an accident. Proportion does more than colour: volume on top wants something narrow below, and the reverse. The shoulder seam should sit on the bone, not past it. Worth saying plainly: our partner brands do not stock tomato red top itself, so what follows is the tops we would actually put with it rather than links we cannot stand behind. The groups below run from the decision that matters most to the ones you make afterwards.

What decides this is shoulder seam, sleeve length and opacity. Everything else is preference. Two from the first group show the range: Petal & Pup's Lumi Embroidered Ruffle Top - Green at $49, and LoveShackFancy's Montane Embroidered Cotton Shirt at $245. The first is the easy entry point; the second is where the money goes. Hold it up to the light. Opacity is the thing product photography hides best. The shoulder seam should sit on the bone, not past it. A higher price mostly buys materials and finishing, and occasionally it buys nothing at all.

If the top is the point, keep everything below it plain. From the second group, Petal & Pup's Lucile Embroidered Shirt - Light Yellow ($59) is the one that earns its place, because it works in more than one context without being restyled. The third group is smaller and deliberately narrower, tops, for the decisions you make after the main one. None of this needs the whole group. One piece from each is usually enough.

There are 20 tops here from 14 brands, $19.98 to $428, all in stock when this was written. We would not buy all of them, and neither should you. Eddie Bauer's Graphic T-Shirt - Nature at $19.98 is the low-risk way in, and Scanlan Theodore's PLEAT TAILORED TANK at $428 only makes sense if this is a category you already use constantly. To be straight about it, if you came here only for tomato red top, this page will not solve that. It will solve what goes around it. Nothing here is included because it is famous, and price is not used as a proxy for quality anywhere on this page. If you take one thing away: buy the one you can picture using this week, not the one you are saving for later.