Dressmaker Customers Guide: Tastes, Events and Reputation

Dressmaker's tagline could be "satisfy — or sabotage! — townsfolk", and that choice is real: you can make a dress that ruins someone's big day. Most of the time you will not want to, because customers are your source of coin and reputation, and reputation is the shop's long game. This guide explains how the town works, how to read a customer properly, and how commissions compound into a thriving shop.

The town is the game's second fabric

Every townsfolk who walks in has two things attached to them:

1. An event. People order dresses for important occasions — and the occasion defines the brief. A harvest festival dress and a winter formal dress are different problems with different answers.
2. Individual tastes. Beyond the event, each customer personally likes certain styles, colours and flourishes. Learning a customer's taste is how a delivered dress becomes a loyal customer.

Treat these as two dials you are tuning at once: the event sets the range, the taste picks the spot. And after delivery, the town answers with a five-star rating — instant, honest feedback on how well the two dials landed.

Delivery feedback: the customer's reaction and a star rating for the finished dress.

Reading a request like a professional

Before opening the sketchbook, break the request into four questions:

• What is the occasion? Formal, casual, seasonal, celebratory. This decides fabric family first (see our fabric guide for the five cloth personalities).
• What silhouette suits the event? Stately and structured, or flowing and free? The answer points your pattern layout at grain or bias.
• What does this customer like? Any history with this townsfolk counts — what they wore before, what they reacted to, what their friends wear.
• What am I able to deliver well today? Honest self-assessment saves reputations, including yours. An excellent simple dress beats an ambitious mess.

Commissions versus off-the-rack

Dressmaker gives you two sales channels, and a healthy shop uses both:

• Commissions are the main event: tailored dresses for specific people and events, paying coin and reputation. They reward everything the game has taught you and carry the risk of a real brief.
• The shop window is your gallery and your buffer. Display your own designs and sell pre-made dresses off the rack — no brief, no deadline, no reputation swing. It keeps coin moving between commissions and doubles as a showroom for your boldest ideas.

The rhythm that works: fill the window with experiments, take commissions to pay for the fabric those experiments consumed, and let delighted commission customers raise the town's opinion of your shop.

Reputation: the slow stat that rules the endgame

Turning in dresses earns both coin and reputation, and reputation is the stat that compounds:

• It is earned per delivery, not per hour. A finished, well-received dress moves the needle; half-finished perfection does not exist. Ship dresses.
• Matching taste multiplies the reward. A dress that nails the event and the customer's personal taste does more for your standing than a technically fine dress that ignores both.
• Reputation widens your options. As the town's opinion of the shop grows, better commissions come your way — which is the quiet difficulty curve of a cozy game.

Sabotage: possible, occasionally funny, rarely optimal

Yes, you can make a dress that sabotages a customer. The game explicitly smiles at the idea. But understand the trade: sabotage is spending reputation — the stat you cannot buy back — for a moment of mischief. If your table group plays Dressmaker for stories, go make history. If you are reading a customers guide, you already know which choice compounds.

A weekly rhythm for a thriving shop

A loop that keeps both stats climbing:

1. Morning: read every open request and pick the ones that match your current skill and fabric stock.
2. Design in the sketchbook first — colours, samples and appliqué before any cutting.
3. Keep the shop window stocked with last week's experiments so no selling hour is wasted.
4. Deliver everything you start. Abandoned dresses are negative work.
5. Note every reaction. The town is small; the customers you dress well today are the customers asking for you by name tomorrow.

Dress the town one personality at a time, and the town will dress your shop in coin and reputation.