In Dressmaker, the money you earn comes from two places: the budget a client pays when you hand in their commission, and the price you get for selling a dress. You start a new game with 400 coins, a few metres of grey cotton and linen, and a handful of black and white buttons. Everything else you buy from the fabric and accessory shops.
The Budget Is Your Pay
The budget written on a commission is the exact amount the client pays you when you hand the dress in. Nothing checks what you spent on fabric, so treat the budget as income and keep your material costs below it. If Librarian Workwear pays 200 and you sew it from fabric that cost 60, you’ve made 140.
The client pays the full budget even when the dress misses a requirement. A failed dress still costs you something, though: you get a quarter of the friendship and prestige a successful one gives (see Pattern Unlocks for what friendship buys you). Some clients won’t accept a failed dress at all and ask you to alter it; the Commissions guide lists them.
Gift dresses never pay. They only raise friendship.
Best-Paying Commissions
These are the largest budgets among the story and Messenger Pigeon commissions. Story commissions arrive in a fixed order, so the big ones come late; the pigeon commissions open up as you finish story ones.
| Commission | Client | Budget |
|---|---|---|
| Crowning Glory | Adora | 5,000 |
| Painted Dream | Prudence | 3,000 |
| Sewn in the Stars | Priya | 3,000 |
| Both of Us? | Rose | 2,500 |
| Marie’s Wedding | Marie | 2,500 |
| Daring Heist | Adora | 2,000 |
| Moonlight Wanderer | Adora | 2,000 |
| Another Encore | Edith | 1,500 |
| Diplomatic Outreach | Marie | 1,500 |
| Never the Bride | Prudence | 1,500 |
| Secret Art Critic | Adora | 1,500 |
| Dark Emissary | Vivian | 1,250 |
The last commission, Peerless Dressmaker, has no requirements and pays 50,000 coins.
Selling Dresses
Once you’ve finished Fierce Funeral, the sketchbook gets a New Dress tab. Dresses you make there have no client, so the only thing to do with them is sell them from the photo screen. You can also sell a dress you made for a commission, but the client won’t get it and you’ll have to start their dress again.
How the Sale Price Is Calculated
The game adds up two numbers and multiplies them by two bonuses:
- Materials: what the fabric and accessories on the dress cost. Fabric counts only the area your pattern pieces cover, plus about 10% for seam allowance, at the shop’s price per metre.
- Labour: 1 for every seam you sew and 1 for every accessory you place.
- Quality bonus: 50% at quality 0, rising by 1% per quality point to 150% at quality 100.
- Prestige bonus: 100% at prestige level 0, rising by 1% per level to 150% at level 50.
Sale price = (Materials + Labour) × Quality bonus × Prestige bonus, rounded to the nearest coin.
For example, a dress with 120 coins of materials, 18 seams and 6 buttons has 24 labour. At quality 90 (140%) and prestige level 10 (110%) it sells for (120 + 24) × 1.40 × 1.10 = 222 coins. The same dress at quality 100 and prestige level 50 sells for 324.
Raising the Sale Price
Quality matters most, because every quality point adds 1% to the price. Below quality 50 the quality bonus drops under 100%, and at prestige level 0 the dress sells for less than its Materials and Labour add up to. The quality guide shows how to cut and sew for quality 100.
Cheap accessories pay for themselves several times over. A button or brooch adds its price to Materials and 1 to Labour, so a 1-coin button adds 2 before the bonuses. At quality 100 and prestige level 0 that’s 3 coins back for every 1 you spend, and 4.5 back at prestige level 50. Trim and lace work differently: they’re priced by the length you sew on but still add only 1 Labour each. These pieces cost 1 coin and are in the shop from the start: Abalone Saucer Button, Antique Brass Embossed Button, Brass Embossed Diamond Button, Brass Pippa Button, Brass Saucer Button, Bronze Shank Button, Flower Button Black, Flower Button White, Gunmetal Shank Button, Pearl Shank Button, Red Copper Pippa Button, Red Copper Shank Button, Wooden Saucer Button.
Expensive fabric scales the same way. Once your quality and prestige bonuses multiply to more than 100%, every coin of fabric on the dress comes back with a profit on top.
Selling Also Earns Prestige
A sold dress gives prestige equal to its quality divided by 100, so a quality 100 dress earns as much as a successful commission. All prestige from dresses shrinks as you finish more of them: the game multiplies each award by 6 ÷ (6 + dresses finished before this one), counting sold dresses and handed-in commissions but not gifts. Your first dress earns the full amount, your seventh earns half and your nineteenth earns a quarter.