Dorothy Parker is the pigeon keeper of Twillford: 7 commissions worth 3,700 coin, Eclectic 60 on five cards, and the first one unlocks the pigeon system.
Dorothy Dressmaker Guide: The Pigeon Lady and Her 7 Commissions
Dorothy Parker keeps pigeons in Twillford and is also the town's busiest gossip channel, and her row of commissions is the one that opens the pigeon-letter side system in Dressmaker. She arrives late as the eighth of ten named clients, and she hands you seven cards worth 3,700 coin in total at quality targets of 75 to 80. Her signature demand is Eclectic 60, a tag that shows up on five of those seven cards and asks for something none of the earlier clients ask for. Finish Pigeon Adoption, her first card and a 400-coin job, and her pigeon Berty adopts you, moves into your shop, and starts carrying the extra commissions and visit cards that run underneath the main story. Her main-story achievement, Snitches Get Stitches, sits at 2.4% of players on the official Steam achievement page, the third-highest of the ten client achievements, read on 30 September 2026.
- Seven main commissions, 3,700 coin between them, quality 75 to 80 on every card
- Eclectic 60 is the tag that defines her, and it appears on five of the seven cards
- Pigeon Adoption (400 coin) is the system key, not just another payday
- Zero of 1,000 sampled Steam reviews mention her, so most advice about her is thin
- The full name Dorothy Parker comes from community indexes; Steam prints only the first name
Who Dorothy is, and how solid the record actually is
She introduces herself by listing her birds as though they were her children: My name is Dorothy Parker, and this is Judith, Montgomery, and Egbert. She immediately corrects herself. No, Judy, Monty, and Berty are my dear friends...and the finest pigeons in the county. Then she adds that they are also incorrigible gossips, which is the joke the whole character runs on. She is a pigeon keeper, a hedge-maze surveillance enthusiast, and the client who wants to be taken by aliens. Those English lines come from community dialogue transcriptions, so treat the wording as Community-observed; it may change with game updates.
What is hard is her place in the roster. Of the 32 Steam achievements, ten are client story achievements of the form Complete all of X's major commissions, and Dorothy is one of the ten names printed there. That is the same evidence tier that makes the roster a confirmed fact rather than a fan list. Her surname is a weaker link: the full name Dorothy Parker appears in fan indexes and community guides, while the official achievement prints the given name only.
| Detail | What the evidence supports | Source tier |
|---|---|---|
| Client status | One of ten named clients, with her own story achievement | Official Steam achievement page |
| Achievement rate | Snitches Get Stitches at 2.4%, third-highest of the ten | Official Steam achievement page, read 2026-09-30 |
| Full name | Dorothy Parker | Fan indexes and community guides only |
| Measurements | 98.3 bust, 83.2 waist, 110.9 hips | Community-observed; it may change with game updates |
| Review mentions | 0 of 1,000 sampled reviews, against 8 for Prudence and 7 for Alice | Steam review API, deduped sample |
That last row is why advice about her is so thin. She is the least-mentioned client in a 1,000-review sample and still one of the mechanically important ones, so the usable detail sits on the community side, in the official r/Dressmaker subreddit and the fan indexes rather than in review text.
Official source: Dressmaker achievements on Steam — the achievement list is what confirms both the ten-client roster and Dorothy's 2.4% story completion rate.
When she shows up, and what has to be ready
The arrival order runs Rose, Prudence, Priya, Marie, Edith, Fiona, Alice, Dorothy, Vivian, Adora. Dorothy sits eighth, and Adora walks in immediately after Dorothy mentions that Princess Sophie has vanished from the castle. There are no chapters in this game, only a chain of cards, so that ordering is card order rather than a chapter number. It comes from fan narrative recaps and the achievement names rather than from official text, so it is Community-observed; it may change with game updates.
By the time she rings the bell you should already be past the fabric wall. Her cards are not early-game work: quality 75 to 80 is the same band Fiona's cards ask for, and the two 750-coin jobs are among the higher-value commissions in the game. If your bolts are still thin, take a style-score client from the earlier queue instead. Ring control makes that a real choice, since build 403 added a bell you must ring to summon the next customer and fixed failed commissions paying nothing.
Her seven commissions, card by card
| Commission | Budget | Hard requirement | Context |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pigeon Adoption | 400 | At least 1 jewel and 1 brooch | The unlock card, not a scoring test |
| Hedge Camouflage | 350 | Green at 40% | Stalking people in the hedge maze |
| Precious Pigeon | 350 | At least 4 different fabrics | Backing a pigeon friend at the pet show |
| Detective Dorothy | 750 | Wool at 50% or more | Her detective outfit |
| Dressed Down | 350 | Spoiler-tier card | The one that reads as deliberately plain |
| Gala Supporter | 750 | Purple at 50% plus 20 cm of trim | Opera gala, supporting Edith |
| Extraterrestrial Entreaty | 750 | 7 named fabrics at 5% each, no style tags | The strangest card in the game |
Two of those deserve unpacking. Pigeon Adoption asks for a jewel and a brooch, which are accessory requirements rather than scoring ones, so you can satisfy it with the cheapest versions in your inventory and keep the expensive pieces for the cards that score. Extraterrestrial Entreaty has no style tag at all. Instead of a threshold you can overshoot, it counts fabric coverage: cotton, lace, linen, sequin, silk, velvet and wool, each at 5% or more of the dress. This rule is Community-observed; it may change with game updates, and it is the one card where a monochrome strategy loses outright.
The tag profile behind those cards
Eclectic 60 is what makes her her own client rather than a variation on Fiona. Glamour 50, Professional 50 and Warm 50 appear once each, Cool 40, Daywear 40, Eveningwear 40, Gothic 40 and Flowers 25 fill out the rest, and Patterned 40 shows on two cards.
| Tag | Threshold | Cards |
|---|---|---|
| Eclectic | 60 | 5 |
| Glamour, Professional, Warm | 50 | 1 each |
| Cool, Daywear, Eveningwear, Gothic | 40 | 1 each |
| Patterned | 40 | 2 |
| Elegant, Flowers | 25 | 1 each |
| Quality | 75 to 80 | all 7 |
Eclectic, Cool, Patterned and Flowers appear on Dorothy's requirements in community indexes, and none of the four shows up in the shorter core tag list most walkthroughs document, which runs Quality, Professional, Workwear, Daywear, Risque, Glamour, Gothic, Cute, Romantic, Playful, Warm, Mature, Elegant and Sparkly. Read the thresholds off the card in your own hand instead of trusting a guide's spelling of the tag, and check the panel that shows what your finished dress actually scored.
How to serve her without wasting money
Every threshold on a Dorothy card is a minimum, which tempts players into overbuilding. Be careful with that instinct, because some commissions in this game also carry a ceiling, and exceeding it fails the job. That ceiling rule is Community-observed; it may change with game updates, and it is the reason to stop adding once the card is green.
Accessories are the other trap. Lace, piping, buttons and gems add no score and no coin, so a diamond trim on Detective Dorothy is decoration you paid for. The exception is the two cards with hard accessory rules, Pigeon Adoption and the 20 cm of trim on Gala Supporter, where the item is a condition and not a scoring lever. Beyond that, match the thread to the fabric, because a mismatched thread drags the quality grade down, and place patterns on the grain deliberately, since grain and bias placement is judged on the finished dress. If you want the numbers behind that panel, the quality grades guide covers how stitch accuracy and fabric tags move a dress up a grade.
Her measurements are recorded as 98.3, 83.2 and 110.9 for bust, waist and hips. The wider waist relative to the other clients is why her dresses read differently on the form, and changing a measurement changes both the mannequin and the two-dimensional pattern. Those three numbers are Community-observed; it may change with game updates.
One delivery rule is worth knowing before you decide what to hand over. You can gift a finished dress to any client you have met, including a failed one, but you cannot gift a commission that is still in progress or the story deadlocks.
The pigeon system she opens
Delivering Pigeon Adoption is what makes Berty, whose real name is Egbert, decide you are worth staying with. From that point Berty lives in your shop, carries additional pigeon commissions, and brings visit cards. Each NPC has two or three pigeon commissions of their own, each with its own achievement, so Dorothy's unlock roughly doubles the volume of paid work available in a run. The community count is 77 regular commissions, 53 main and 24 pigeon-letter, though that total comes from a single site and does not reconcile cleanly with per-character card counts that add to 75. Both numbers are Community-observed; they may change with game updates.
His terms are not generous. He also hopes that you are aware that pigeons require daily petting, and a diet of only the finest grains. The care side is a daily habit rather than a scored task, but the pigeon commissions behind it carry real money.
For the wider queue logic, the characters hub sorts clients by what their request physically demands, and the getting-started walkthrough covers the measure, cut and stitch loop that every Dorothy card runs through.
Her part in the Twillford story
Her achievement name, Snitches Get Stitches, is a pun on the gossip that runs through her whole arc, and the four wants in the table above are the shape of it: the detective outfit, the hedge-maze stakeout, the opera gala where she backs Edith, and the alien abduction fantasy. She is also the one who tells you Princess Sophie has vanished from the castle just this week, and Adora arrives in the shop right after that line lands.
That timing has not stopped players from deciding that Adora is Sophie. Nothing confirms it. The fan timeline records the disappearance and never resolves it, so treat the theory as an unverified player inference rather than a plot fact.
Official source: Dressmaker on Steam and the official Discord — the store page carries the commission loop, the client style registers and the build 403 fix that made failed commissions pay when the client accepts, while the Discord is where the developers post design detail the store page never printed.
FAQ
How many commissions does Dorothy have in Dressmaker? Seven main cards, 3,700 coin in total: Pigeon Adoption at 400, Hedge Camouflage at 350, Precious Pigeon at 350, Detective Dorothy at 750, Dressed Down at 350, Gala Supporter at 750 and Extraterrestrial Entreaty at 750. Every one asks for quality 75 to 80.
Do I have to finish Dorothy's commissions to unlock the pigeon system? You only need her first card, Pigeon Adoption. Delivering it makes Berty adopt you, and Berty then carries the separate pigeon-letter commissions and visit cards. The other six Dorothy cards are story, not the unlock.
Why does Extraterrestrial Entreaty have no style tags? It is a fabric-coverage card instead of a style card. It asks for cotton, lace, linen, sequin, silk, velvet and wool at 5% or more each, so a single-fibre dress cannot pass it. The exact thresholds are Community-observed and may change with game updates.
What does Dorothy need for Pigeon Adoption? At least one jewel and one brooch. Those are conditions rather than scoring targets, so the cheapest accessories you own will clear the card. That is the whole point of taking it early.
Is Dorothy the missing Princess Sophie? No evidence supports it. Dorothy is the one who reports Princess Sophie's disappearance from the castle, and Adora walks into the shop right afterwards, which is what fuels the theory. The story never confirms the link.
Why is Dorothy's achievement rarer than her commissions look? Snitches Get Stitches is at 2.4% of players, third-highest among the ten client achievements, because it needs all seven cards completed rather than one. Fan wikis still show an older snapshot of 1.8%; the official Steam figure was read on 30 September 2026 and will keep climbing.
Related Guides
- Dressmaker characters hub - all ten clients compared, and how to triage the queue when the fabric wall is empty.
- Dressmaker quality grades explained - how tag thresholds, stitch accuracy and the over-target panel turn into the grade a client pays for.
- Dressmaker getting-started walkthrough - the measure, cut and stitch loop, plus the controls you will repeat on all seven Dorothy cards.
- Dressmaker on Steam and platform notes - the release date, price, the build 403 and 410 patches, and where the developers post future updates.