Economy & progression
How Money & Prestige Work in Dressmaker
Learn how money, material cost, Commission budgets, sale price and Prestige work — and which one actually matters for what you are trying to do.
Five things get mixed together in every conversation about money in this game. They are not the same number, they are not the same system, and only one of them is a limit.
- 1
Money
What you can spend
- 2
Material cost
What the dress uses
- 3
Sale price
What the finished dress is worth
- 4
Prestige
Long-term progression and a value bonus
Read from the extracted build 25482629: 88 briefs with their budgets, 352 fabrics and 331 accessories.
01 · Money
What money is for
Money buys cloth and decorations. Nothing else in the game spends it, and nothing else in the game is spent on your behalf.
- 1
Money
What you have, spent on cloth and decorations.
- 2
Materials
Bought before the dress exists, at whatever the catalogue charges.
- 3
A dress
Made at the workbench, finished to whatever quality the cutting allows.
- 4
Money again
Through a commission met, or a dress sold on your own account.
02 · A boundary
Money is not Prestige
These two are the pair most often described as if they were the same thing. One you spend, the other you reach.
- What it is forBuying cloth and decorations.Recording how far this save has come.
- Do you spend it?Yes. It leaves your balance and does not come back on its own.No. It is not a balance and nothing is bought with it.
- Where it comes fromMaking and selling dresses, by commission or on your own account.The same dressmaking, tracked as progress rather than as a payment.
- Does it change a sale price?Indirectly, by buying the materials the base value is made of.Directly, as a percent per level on top of the quality bonus.
- What it unlocksNothing. It buys rows that are already available to you.Fabrics and accessories, one gate per level.
Money lets you buy what is already available. Prestige helps decide what becomes available, and it also multiplies what a finished dress sells for.
03 · Commission budget
Commission Budget is not your wallet
A brief with a budget on it is telling you the ceiling for that job. It is not a balance, and it is not a payment.
One brief in this build, priced
The dress below is the one the game's own solver accepts for this brief, billed at the game's own figures. The budget is the one the brief carries.
- Cloth1 fabrics on this dress
- 81
- Decorations2 decorations on this dress
- 10
- Material cost
- 91
What is in it
- Green Leaf Print Silk30 per metre · 100% of the dress
- Black Silk Square Bow2 each × 36
- Black Velvet Ribbon Flower4 each × 14
Cloth and decoration rows are the dress's own contents; the three coin figures above them are the bill the game computed for it.
The budgets this build sets
Every brief carries a limit, and the limits are not evenly spread.
88 of the build's 88 briefs set a budget, running from 200 to 50,000 coins with 500 as the middle. Against them sit 113 dresses the solver validated, each compared with its own brief's ceiling.
The closest any of them comes is Parental Guidance, at 31% of its budget.
Not one of those 113 dresses reaches its ceiling. The budget is a ceiling on the job, and the dresses that pass the job's other requirements stay well under it.
04 · Material cost
What a dress costs to make
Material cost is what the cloth and the decorations on this dress contribute. It is two bills added together, and the two bills are charged in different ways.
Each part of the dress is charged at its cloth's price per metre against its own panel area and its own panel count: area × 1.10, plus 0.02 for every panel. A big part in an expensive cloth is the expensive case, and a small part in the same cloth is not.One example with a two-panel bodice-shaped area of 1.10 and 12 panels in Black Corduroy at 30 per metre comes to 44 coins.A bow, a jewel or a brooch is bought one at a time. Eight jewels at 15 each cost 120, whatever the dress looks like around them — which is how a single decoration line can outweigh the cloth bill of a whole dress.Decoration prices run the same way: 137 of 331 accessories are 2 or less each, and 173 more are 3 or less.Trim, lace and ribbon are priced by the metre, so the row is measured: 60 cm of Lime Green Piping at 1 per metre comes to 1 coins, and 10 cm of the same trim costs a sixth of that.106 of the build's 352 fabrics are priced up to 20 per metre and 178 more are up to 30. Nothing on the shelf is close in price to a metre of the dearest cloth.Two real bills from this build
Both of these are dresses the solver accepted, with the game's own cloth and decoration totals.
- Cloth1 fabrics on this dress
- 81
- Decorations2 decorations on this dress
- 10
- Material cost
- 91
What is in it
- Green Leaf Print Silk30 per metre · 100% of the dress
- Black Silk Square Bow2 each × 36
- Black Velvet Ribbon Flower4 each × 14
- Cloth2 fabrics on this dress
- 9
- Decorations3 decorations on this dress
- 148
- Material cost
- 157
What is in it
- Burlap0 per metre · 59% of the dress
- Snow Petal Lace15 per metre · 41% of the dress
- Oblong Ruby Jewel15 each × 8120
- Pearl Detailing10 each × 220
- Skinny Bow Black2 each × 48
05 · Sale price
How a sale price is put together
The finished dress is worth its materials plus the labour the game charges you for making it, and that base value is then multiplied twice.
- 1
Materials
What the cloth and decorations on the dress cost. This page's material section is the whole story of this number.
- 2
Labour
The game charges labour for the panels joined and the decorations placed. That rate is not in this build's data, so this page draws the row and stops there rather than inventing a figure — the sale price calculator asks you for the one your own sale screen shows.
- 3
Base value
Materials plus labour. Both multipliers below act on this figure, one after the other.
- 4
Quality multiplier
Quality 80 multiplies the base value by ×1.30. It is a bonus, never a penalty: even Quality 0 is half the base value, not nothing.
- 5
Prestige multiplier
Prestige 10 multiplies what is left after quality by ×1.10. It is the smaller of the two bonuses at normal figures.
- 6
Sale price
The game settles its money in whole coins, so each product is rounded before the next multiplier touches it. The sale price calculator keeps that order, which is why it can differ by a coin from a single combined multiplication.
Sale price ≈ (materials + labour) × quality multiplier × prestige multiplier, rounded at each step. The two multipliers are recovered from the build; the labour line is not, which is why this page shows the chain and the calculator asks for the one figure nobody here has.
06 · Quality
What Quality does to the price
Quality is not only something a commission checks. It is a multiplier on the value of every dress you finish, which is why it is worth more than a passing grade.
The multiplier is 0.5 + quality / 100, so every quality point is worth one percent of the base value and the curve never goes below half. Quality itself comes from the grain line, the fit and the sewing accuracy — the breakdown is on the quality guide.
07 · Prestige
What Prestige does to the price
Prestige is a progression rating first. It also multiplies the price, which means the same dress is worth more to a player who has come further.
The multiplier is 1 + prestige / 100. The gate ladder in this build runs to level 51, and the bonus is only ever positive: a level adds a percent, it never takes one away.
08 · Dress value
What makes a dress worth more
Four things decide the number on the dress, and they enter the sum in a fixed order. Two come from what you bought, two from how you made it and how far you have come.
- 1
Materials
More cloth and dearer cloth both raise the base value — and both are money out of your hand before the dress exists.
- 2
Labour
The panels joined and the decorations placed. The game adds it to materials to make the base value, and its rate is not in this build's data.
- 3
Base value
The figure everything below acts on. A dress worth nothing in materials is worth nothing however it is made.
- 4
Quality
A multiplier from 0.5× to 1.5×, decided by the grain line, the fit and the sewing.
- 5
Prestige
A multiplier of one percent per level, decided by how far the save has come rather than by this dress.
- 6
Sale price
What the game pays. It is the only figure on the list you cannot influence at the moment you are cutting, which is why the two multipliers matter more than the shelf you buy from.
09 · Worked
The same base value, two bonuses
The labour row is missing from this build, so the bonuses are shown against a stated base value of 100 coins rather than against the worked dress. The arithmetic is the game's own, including the order it rounds in.
A dress made at Quality 80 by a player at Prestige 10 earns half again on top of its base value. Nothing about the dress changed between the two rows — the second one is what the game pays.
10 · Fabric
Does expensive fabric mean more money?
Not automatically. A dearer cloth lifts the base value and the upfront cost by the same proportion, and it touches neither multiplier.
The cheapest non-free cloth in the catalogue is Black Cotton at 10 per metre; the dearest is Turquoise Velvet at 80. On the same dress, the second one multiplies the material bill — and the base value it feeds — but leaves the quality and prestige rows exactly where they were.
11 · Off-the-Rack
Where selling fits in
Off-the-Rack is the half of the economy a commission cannot cover: a dress nobody asked for, sold for money and progress.
- A client asks for something specific.You decide what to make.
- 88 briefs in this build, each with its own requirement list.No brief to satisfy, so no requirement list to check.
- Meeting the brief, and the progression that comes with it.A dress you wanted to make, and the money it brings in.
- The budget caps what this job is allowed to cost.No budget, so the only ceiling is your own wallet.
12 · Prestige unlocks
What Prestige actually unlocks
In this build, a prestige level gates cloth and decorations. It does not gate patterns, and this is the boundary that sends most players to the wrong part of the game.
- Unlocked by prestige412
- State
- 196 fabrics and 216 accessories sit behind a prestige level. That is every row in both catalogues that is not available from the start.
- Decided by
- Prestige level
- Reads as
- Prestige 51
- Unlocked by a relationship117
- State
- 117 patterns are granted by a character relationship level, across 10 clients. This is the ladder that opens patterns.
- Decided by
- Character relationship
- Reads as
- Character · Relationship Lv.1
- Available from the start311
- State
- 40 patterns, 156 fabrics and 115 accessories need nothing at all — a new save has them.
- Decided by
- Your save, from the start
- Reads as
- Available from the start
- Source not documented21
- State
- 21 patterns carry no source in the export at all. The site says so rather than guessing which ladder they belong to.
- Decided by
- Nothing documented
- Reads as
- Unlock source not documented
The prestige ladder, rung by rung
The deepest gate in this build is level 51. This is how many catalogue rows each rung holds back.
Prestige is not the whole progression system. 117 patterns hang off the 5-rung relationship ladders of 10 clients instead, and those rungs move for reasons a prestige level cannot.
13 · Progress
How to get more Prestige
Prestige comes out of ordinary dressmaking and selling. It is not a currency you can shop for, and there is no separate activity that farms it.
- Finishing work is what moves it — commissions and the dresses you sell yourself both feed the same progression.
- Off-the-Rack is the outlet that exists for this: make a dress of your own design, sell it, and put the money towards cloth you could not afford yet.
- This page does not publish a rate per hour, because the build's export does not carry the award curve. Anything claiming a farm route is describing somebody's save, not the game's arithmetic.
14 · Three tracks
Money, Prestige and Relationships
Dressmaker has three tracks that all look like progress, and each one answers a different question. Choosing the wrong one is the most common way to spend an evening unlocking nothing.
- SystemMoneyAnswersWhat can I afford?A balance you spend and refill through dressmaking.
- SystemPrestigeAnswersHow far has this save come?A rating that gates cloth and decorations and adds a percent per level to every sale price.
- SystemRelationshipAnswersWhat have I unlocked with this client?A level per client that hands over that client's patterns.
Prestige unlocks are not the whole progression system. Character relationships control another important unlock track — the one patterns sit on.
Progression guide15 · Empty wallet
Why your money runs out
A green dress is not one mistake. It is one of five, and the fix for each is different.
- Expensive clothCloth reaches 80 per metre in this build, and the charge is per panel area rather than per metre. One large part in the dearest cloth can cost more than a whole dress in a cheap one.
- Large or complex patternsArea is the multiplier and panel count is a second term, so a dress with many panels of a large pattern costs more in the same cloth. The cloth usage is charged per panel, not per garment.
- Too many decorationsDecorations are their own bill and can dwarf the cloth: one dress in this build is 9 coins of cloth and 148 of decoration. Eight jewels at 15 each is 120 before any cloth is counted.
- RecutsCutting a panel again pays for that panel's cloth a second time, including its seam allowance and its per-panel term. It is the cheapest mistake to make and the easiest to make repeatedly.
- Buying before you measureDecorations bought early are money already spent when the cloth bill turns out to be larger than expected. The cost calculator prices the dress before you commit, which is the whole point of it.
16 · Planner
Check the money before you cut
Four numbers you already have, and the two answers that decide whether you can still change your mind. Nothing here is saved or sent anywhere.
209 of the budget still unspent
Room to change your mind
409 left in your hand
You can afford this dress
The multipliers this dress would meet
Quality 80 multiplies the value by ×1.30 and prestige 10 by ×1.10. Neither of them looks at what the cloth cost, which is why a cheap dress can outearn an expensive one.
The two states the planner checks are the two the game checks: the dress against the job's ceiling, and the material bill against the money in hand. Neither of them looks at what the dress will sell for — that is the next section and the sale price calculator.
The fields start on a real brief from this build: a 300 coin ceiling, its 81 cloth bill and its 10 decoration bill.
17 · Decisions
What should I improve?
Six answers, each with the page that owns it. None of them require you to understand how this site is organised.
- I need money nowA dress of your own design can be made and sold without a brief attached to it.Off-the-Rack guide
- My dress costs too muchSee the cloth and decoration bills split out, part by part, before you commit to the cut.Cost Calculator
- My dress sells for too littleCheck the three things that decide the price: the base value, the quality bonus and the prestige bonus.Sale Price Calculator
- Fabric is eating my budgetFind out where the metres go — the pattern and the variant decide the area you are charged for.Fabric Usage guide
- An item is still unavailableLook up the row and see which ladder it hangs off, or whether it is obtainable at all.Unlock Finder
- I want more patternsPatterns come from character relationships, not from prestige levels.Progression guide
18 · Preview
The chain on 100 coins
A tailor's tag for the arithmetic itself, so the bonuses are visible before any of your own figures are involved.
- Materials
- Not in this build's data
- Labour
- Not in this build's data
- Base value
- 100
- Quality 80
- ×1.30
- Prestige 10
- ×1.10
Every line above the base value is money you spend; every line below it is money the game adds. The 100 is a round number chosen so the percentages are easy to read — your own dress starts from its materials plus the labour your sale screen shows.
19 · Misconceptions
Six things players believe
Each of these is a reasonable reading of the game's own screens, and each of them sends a player to the wrong system.
- Prestige is money.NoThey are two systems. Money is a balance you spend on cloth; prestige is a rating that gates cloth and multiplies the price. Nothing converts one into the other.
- The most expensive fabric always makes the most money.Not quiteA dearer cloth raises the base value and the upfront cost together, and it does not touch either multiplier. It cannot make a dress relatively more profitable; it makes the same dress bigger.
- A high Style Score means a high sale price.NoStyle Score is not one of the recovered sale-price multipliers. It is a requirement a brief checks, and the dress the game pays for is priced by materials, labour, quality and prestige.
- Decorations raise the Quality of a dress.NoQuality comes from the grain line, the fit and the sewing accuracy. Decorations raise the material bill, which raises the base value — a different part of the sum entirely.
- Prestige unlocks every pattern eventually.NoIn this build, 117 of the published patterns are granted by character relationship levels. A prestige level gates cloth and decorations, so grinding prestige will never hand over a pattern.
- If it is in the database, I can buy it eventually.NoSome rows ship as hidden developer content with no route into a normal save. They are not gated behind a level — they are simply not part of the game's progression, and the site says so rather than inventing a path.
FAQ
Money and Prestige questions
The questions this page is built to answer, in the shortest form it can give them.
How do I make money in Dressmaker?
By finishing and selling dresses. Commissions pay for work to a brief, and Off-the-Rack lets you make a dress of your own design and sell it — the game describes that system as a way to sell the dresses you make and save towards more elaborate work.
What does Prestige do?
Two things in this build. It gates cloth and decorations — 196 fabrics and 216 accessories sit behind a level — and it multiplies the sale price by one percent per level.
Does Quality affect the sale price?
Yes. The recovered multiplier is 0.5 + quality / 100, so Quality 80 pays 1.30 times the base value and Quality 100 pays 1.50.
Does Prestige affect the price of a dress?
Yes, by 1 + prestige / 100. The bonus is applied after the quality bonus, and the game rounds between the two steps.
Is the Commission Budget my money?
No. It is a ceiling attached to one job. Your wallet pays for the dress either way, and a budget is not a payment or a balance.
Does expensive fabric always make more money?
No. It raises the base value and the cost by the same proportion, and leaves the quality and prestige multipliers alone. What decides the price is the making, not the shelf.
Does Prestige unlock patterns?
Not in this build. Patterns are granted by character relationship levels; prestige gates fabrics and accessories. Progressing one track will not move the other.
I am completely out of money.
That is a different page: the recovery guide covers the free cloth and the no-money situation step by step.
Scope
What this page does and does not claim
The three limits a reader should know before quoting anything above.
- The coin figures come from the game's own validated dresses: the solver's cloth, decoration and material totals for 88 briefs, not a reconstruction. The multiplier functions are recovered from the extracted build 25482629.
- Labour is missing. The game charges it for the panels joined and the decorations placed, and the export carries the sale-price endpoint's signature rather than its rate — so this page draws the row, and the sale price calculator asks you for the figure your own screen shows.
- Prestige awards are not modelled here. The build's export does not carry the curve that decides how much prestige a finished dress is worth, so the page describes where prestige comes from and refuses to publish a rate.
This page is one chapter of the Dressmaker guide, which covers the whole process from the first measurement to the finished dress.