Dressmaker Pattern Unlocks & Dress Pieces

Last updated: 2026-09-28 · 10 min read

You cannot buy a dress piece. There is no shop shelf for them, no unlock token, no currency that trades for them — the only way to add a bodice, skirt, sleeve or collar to your sketchbook is to make a specific person like you enough. That makes the pattern list less a catalogue and more a relationship map, and it is why a client offering a modest budget can still be the most valuable commission in the game.

How Unlocks Work

Every client has five friendship stars, and each star you reach hands over a small set of patterns — usually two or three, grouped by garment family. Because the groups are themed, a client's reward path reads like a wardrobe progression rather than a random drop: one level gives you corsetry, the next gives you eveningwear, and so on.

Friendship rises mainly through completed commissions, with a further boost from gift quests and from the taste of the work you hand over. The practical point is that you cannot rush a star milestone by repeating commissions; you progress by moving through a client's story.

FIG. 01 — A design assembled from separate bodice, sleeve and skirt pieces. Changing any one of them changes the style tags the sketchbook reports.

The Pattern Table

All 155 dress pieces. "Unlocked by" shows either the client and star level that grants the piece, or Start for pieces available from the beginning. Style weights are the piece's contribution to each tag before fabric is pinned.

FIG. 02 — The pattern selector lists the chosen bodice, sleeve and skirt together with the fabric the design will consume, which is what the unlock table above is feeding into.

Reading The Tag Weights

Every piece carries a set of tag weights, and they are not all positive. A piece that pushes Gothic up by 75 may also pull Cute down by the same order of magnitude, which matters the moment a commission sets a ceiling instead of a floor.

The table shows the four strongest positive weights per piece, then every negative weight below them in brown. Reading it that way is deliberate: the positives tell you which commission the piece is for, and the negatives tell you which commission it will ruin. A dramatic collar with a heavy Gothic weight is exactly the wrong choice for a client asking for Simple, and knowing that before you draft saves the whole dress.

The weights are per piece, not per garment. A dress assembled from five pieces carries five separate contributions, which is why combining pieces across families is how you clear several thresholds at once instead of maxing one tag and missing the rest.

Combining Pieces

The sketchbook is the only place to judge a combination, because the tag preview is the sum of your pattern choices and the fabric swatches you pin to them. Two rules follow from that.

First, draft the silhouette before you shop. Pinning swatches to a finished design tells you immediately whether you clear the thresholds; buying fabric for a design you have not drafted is guessing with real money. Second, when a requirement asks for two or three tags at once, split them across families rather than hunting for one perfect fabric — a bodice that leans Elegant paired with a skirt that leans Romantic usually beats searching for a single cloth strong in both.

The matching half of this page is the fabric and style tag reference, which lists which cloth carries which tag and what it costs per metre.

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