Off the rack
shop window
Besides commissions, finished designs can sit in the shop window and sell off the rack. Steam extras say you can display your own designs and sell pre-made dresses off of the rack when you want a break from commissioned work. Launch notes treat that off-rack time as extra beyond the about 35-hour story-commission estimate, so the window is not a shortcut through Alice or Prudence; it is a second till.
May Tea showed off-the-rack shop-window selling as a full-game feature, not a prototype leftover. The press still of a finished dress with sell options is the player-facing version of that sentence: you made it, you price it, someone walking past the glass can take it home without a fitting appointment. Keep at least one grain cotton staple in the window so the till still moves while you recut a named client's silk. May Tea treated the window as a full-game feature, so it is not a prototype leftover you have to unlock with a later patch. Ring the bell when you want a client; restock the glass when you want coin without a brief. A quiet window is a recut, not a missing unlock. Change the fabric family and try again.
How off-the-rack sales work
You sew a complete dress, decorate it if you want, and put it in the shop window instead of handing it to the client who commissioned it. Reputation from a named major commission does not come from this path; coin does. Use the window for silhouettes you already like, especially grain-stable daywear that does not depend on one person's measurements.
Because the mannequin follows a client, a window dress should be cut for a general hang, not for Priya's exact form. Bias evening pieces can still sell, but they are a narrower bet on who walks past the glass. Cotton and linen grain dresses are the safer stock.
Build 403's ultra-wide shop button fix lives here in spirit: the studio had to repair shop UI so window actions could be clicked on wide monitors. If a sell button looked unreachable at launch, that is the patch.
Window versus reputation and coin from clients
Commissions pay reputation and coin and advance the ten named major-commission achievements. The window pays coin and time. Scalding September Tea is explicit that the 35-hour figure excludes off-rack, which is how you know the studio counts this as extra play rather than as the story route.
Ringing the bell still summons a customer even if the window is full. You can keep a rack selling while you take Dorothy's next major piece. That is the bespoke-shop fantasy After Party Tea described: you are not scaling a fashion empire, you are keeping a room of dresses and a room of people.
Failed commissions that the shop accepts now pay as of Build 403. A rejected window dress is a different object; if it does not sell, it still occupies glass. Restock instead of waiting forever on a bias velvet nobody wants.
What is worth putting in the glass
Stock dresses you can recut quickly: grain cotton, modest buttons, no 50-metre lace. Save silk, velvet, and heavy appliqué for named clients who will actually wear the cost. Opulence and Excess is a commission flex, not a window strategy.
The sketchbook is the right place to design a window staple. Colour it, clip samples, then cut several in related palettes so the glass looks like a shop rather than one leftover. You still assign fabric per panel; a cotton body with a linen sleeve is legal stock.
Pet the kitty remains a listed feature even when you are tending the window. It is not a sales buff. It is a thing you can do in the room while the glass works.
Steam shop, not the itch stall
Off-the-rack selling described here is the Steam full game on Windows and macOS. itch.io Prototype 0.5.5 is a separate name-your-price zip and is not the source for window rules. Linux flags are false on Steam even though the prototype shipped Linux builds.
Family Sharing and Steam Cloud are store categories, so a window you stocked on one machine can follow the cloud save. There is still no microtransaction shop sitting beside the glass.
When you are done stocking, the making loop starts again at fabric. The window does not replace commissions; it sits beside them.
Time budget next to the 35-hour estimate
The 35-hour story-commission figure is a first-party launch number that deliberately leaves the window out. If a session is only stocking glass, you are not moving Alice's chain. That is useful on purpose: After Party Tea framed the shop as bespoke work, not an empire grind, so the window is a rest valve between named clients.
Cloud saves keep the rack. Family Sharing is a store category, so another profile on the same Steam family can inherit that stock depending on Steam's own sharing rules. The window is still a Steam-full-game feature; Prototype 0.5.5 is not the source for those buttons.
Price the window in gold you actually have. Spending 5 000 gold on a successful commission dress is an achievement; spending that much on a window piece nobody buys is just an empty till. Recut a cheaper cotton staple if the glass has been quiet for a day of ringing the bell.