How to Make Money and Maximize Workshop Profits in Dressmaker
Earning gold in Dressmaker combines steady story commission budgets, recurring pigeon deliveries, and high-margin off-the-rack dress sales.
Understanding Sale Breakdown and Revenue Multipliers
When liquidating completed garments, the sales summary screen reveals four factors: Materials, Labour, Quality, and Prestige. Payouts follow the formula: (materials + labour) multiplied by (50 + quality)% multiplied by (100 + rank)%. Because quality acts as a direct profit multiplier, review our guide to increasing garment quality to maximize returns. Materials reflect textile yardage and accessories costs, while Labour awards points for every stitched seam and embellishment pin. The Prestige Bonus line reflects your atelier rank, beginning at 100% and adding one point per rank up to 150% at Rank 50.
Commission Economics and Prestige Scaling
Delivering client commissions grants the full agreed budget even if specific style tags fall short. The exception involves 18 core story commissions, where an unsatisfied client reopens the commission to give you another attempt. In addition to story orders, pigeon commissions pay from 250 to 1000 gold, with orders from 
Adora paying the most. A successful commission awards +1 friendship (one star) and +1 prestige, whereas a failed delivery yields +0.25 friendship and +0.25 prestige.
Prestige earned from garments experiences diminishing returns governed by the formula: prestige multiplied by 6 divided by (6 + n), where n represents the total count of dresses finished previously. Furthermore, liquidating a dress grants bonus prestige equal to 0.01 multiplied by its quality, scaled using that exact diminishing factor.
Zero-Cost Burlap and Embellishment Economics
If your treasury runs low, 
Burlap is free at 0 gold per metre, letting you acquire cloth even with an empty purse. Although Burlap lowers 16 of the 22 style tags while raising Uncomfortable by 50 and Patterned by 10, it provides a zero-cost medium to generate profit from Labour seams alone. When crafting uncommissioned garments (such as a 
Strapless Bodice) detailed in our off-the-rack dress guide, adding embellishments becomes highly profitable. Each accessory counts at its full shop price in Materials and adds 1 to Labour; on any dress with a quality of 50 or more, accessories pay for themselves.
If you realize near the end of a commission that requirements cannot be met, do not press Complete Commission. Instead, click Sell as off-rack on the final photo screen to liquidate the gown, recovering material costs while keeping the commission open for another attempt — or turn leftover bolt voids into gold with our fabric recycling and remnant guide.