What dresses can you make?
The game is built around a wardrobe rather than a single silhouette, and the design book is where it is assembled: components are mixed and matched, fabrics run from cotton and linen to silk, velvet and sequins, and decoration is applied afterwards with buttons, bows, appliqué and lace trims. The developers put the launch content at over 150 dress pieces, over 450 fabrics and over 350 accessories.
- Commission dresses
- Made to a client’s occasion, taste and budget; delivered for payment, prestige and relationship progress
- Off-the-rack dresses
- Designed and sewn on your own initiative, then sold from the shop window
- Tiered gowns
- Skirts build in layers — a creator working with mods counts tiers up to six
- Replicas
- Players rebuild real-world garments in-game; one named example is Lirika Matoshi’s Strawberry Midi Dress
That breadth is why the same game produces both a librarian’s work dress and a fantasy ball gown. Nothing in the official material ranks dress types or declares one better than another — the game publishes no per-garment stats, so any “best dress” list is editorial rather than measured. What the game does state is the judgement: style, choice of fabric and overall execution determine how happy the client will be. A plain dress cut and sewn well can therefore beat an ambitious one that misses the brief.
The design system: components, fabric and the mannequin
Design happens in the sketchbook, before a single metre is cut. In RTGame’s playthrough the host changes each component by clicking the arrows beside it and describes the result as “a lot of options”; a launch-day playthrough names the components as bodice, sleeves, collar and skirt. Fabric swatches can be dragged onto the page to see how cloth and cut read together, and the pencil lets you try colour combinations before committing.
Set the body first
Measure bust, waist and hips with the tape, then turn the mannequin’s gears until the ghost outlines match those numbers. The pattern is drafted to a body, so the dress starts from a shape rather than a size.
Choose the components
Cycle bodice, sleeves, collar and skirt with the arrows. This is where a work dress becomes a ball gown, and where the client’s stated occasion is either answered or ignored.
Try colour and cloth
The pencil shades each part so you can test a palette before buying; dragging a swatch onto the page shows how that fabric behaves with that cut.
Buy the cloth the design needs
Fabric comes from the emporium by the metre. The launch-day playthrough buys three metres to go with two already in stock, because the design needs five — the same five-metres-per-dress figure a review reports the game encouraging.
Cut, pin, sew
Pattern pieces are dragged onto the cloth and cut out; the pieces are pinned and sewn together on the mannequin. Sewing is an input-driven step, not a cutscene, and mistakes show in the finished dress.
Decorate, then judge
Buttons, bows, appliqué and lace trims go on last. In RTGame’s playthrough the finished dress fails its first judgement as not professional enough, and a set of buttons is what rescues it.
Nothing in the official material publishes the numeric weights behind the style, fabric and execution judgement. That a dress carries a measurable quality percentage is confirmed by the achievement “99 Problems But A Stitch Aint One”; how the percentage is computed is Unconfirmed.
Off-the-rack dresses: designing for yourself
The second route is the one that produced the game’s viral screenshots. Mashable reports that while commissions keep players busy, Dressmaker also lets you sew dresses to be sold off the rack, and that this is primarily where players have taken the creative opportunity — designing dazzling fantasy gowns, experimenting with materials, and recreating famous pieces.
The developers added the feature deliberately: a monthly development post describes the off-the-rack option as a way for players to make their own designs to sell, rather than only fulfilling other people’s briefs. Practically, it decouples design from a client’s taste. No one is going to reject a dress for being too much, because no one commissioned it; the shop window does the judging instead. That is also why the most extravagant work on social media tends to be off-the-rack: a client’s brief caps ambition, and the rack does not.
How off-the-rack pricing is set, and whether a rack dress can fail to sell, is Unconfirmed — no official source describes the shop-window economy beyond the existence of the feature.
The gowns players went viral with
Mashable’s report names the creators behind the most-shared designs, which makes it possible to describe the scene without inventing anything. Each of the following is that outlet’s account of a named player’s work.
@vampikoi — beaded fantasy gowns
Intricately beaded gowns described as coming out of a fantasy princess’s daydream. The report notes the time investment and the in-game cost of the materials, and that this creator uses a mod granting infinite funds for her projects.
@Eviarnilla — paintings on cloth
Dresses inspired by classical art, including recreations of Van Gogh’s “Starry Night” and Hokusai’s “The Great Wave off Kanagawa” worked onto the garment.
@CrowsNestHead — sculptural materials
Sculptural dresses that use Dressmaker’s materials to imitate fur and armour — the clearest demonstration that the fabric list is a medium, not a constraint.
The Strawberry Midi Dress
A real-world garment — Lirika Matoshi’s Strawberry Midi Dress, which went viral in 2020 — rebuilt inside the game by players.
Two things make this possible. The first is the material list: over 450 fabrics at launch, plus accessories, means the difference between a fur coat and a suit of armour is a choice of swatch rather than a different game. The second is the mod scene, which Mashable puts at over 240 mods on Nexus Mods — including a Halloween-themed pack from @vampikoi and the infinite-funds mod already mentioned. The mods page on this site covers installation; what matters here is that the most elaborate dresses often depend on both the design system and an unofficial funding shortcut.
Dressmaker’s official material does not publish a gallery of player designs, and this page does not reproduce any. The creator handles above are cited as Mashable names them; no image, link or download is claimed here.
What actually decides whether a dress works
Strip away the ambition and the same three inputs decide the outcome every time, because the game states them on screen: style, choice of fabric and overall execution.
Style answers the brief
A client states an occasion and a taste. Rose asks for something appropriate for work, simple and elegant, that will not stand out too much — a floor-length ball gown with a train is a well-made dress that fails the brief.
Fabric has tags, not stats
The emporium filters stock by tags such as professional or uncomfortable, but the game calls those tags an estimate and says the real fabric used affects the real final result. The tag narrows the shelf; it does not decide the dress.
Execution is the seam you sewed
Sewing is performed, not skipped. A review quoted on the store page notes that sewing mistakes reduce dress quality, which is why the same design can score differently twice.
Decoration is a rescue tool
In RTGame’s playthrough the first finished dress is judged not professional enough and is saved by adding buttons — the clearest evidence that decoration is scored, not cosmetic.
Read together, those four points explain the shape of good play: design to the brief rather than to your taste, buy fabric whose tags match the client, sew carefully because quality is measured, and treat decoration as a lever you pull when the judgement comes back short. None of it requires knowing a hidden formula — and no official source publishes one, so a page that offers exact numbers would be inventing them.
What is not confirmed about dresses
Dressmaker publishes no dress catalogue and no per-garment stats, so several reasonable questions have no official answer yet:
- Whether any dress type is mechanically stronger than another: Unconfirmed — no stats are published.
- How the style, fabric and execution inputs are weighted into the final judgement: Unconfirmed.
- Whether off-the-rack dresses have a fixed price or a demand model: Unconfirmed.
- The full component list behind the over-150 dress pieces: Unconfirmed — no official catalogue exists.
- Whether new dress pieces arrive in future updates: the developers say more free content is coming, but name no items.
Fabric is half of every dress decision. The five fabrics the developers name — cotton, linen, wool, silk and velvet — and the haberdashery that finishes a garment are covered on the fabrics page. Fabrics →
Rankings of fabrics and decorations, with the caveat that no official stats exist, are on the tier list. Tier List →