A dressmaker is a person who produces custom clothes for women, primarily evening dresses and wedding gowns A dressmaker is also historically called a mantua-maker or a modiste.

Before clothing became mass produced by industry. A dressmaker was a relatively well paid position, someone who would be employed by wealthy women to produce their clothes, whilst many other women would sew their own clothes. A dressmaker on the clients request would copy or adapt the latest clothing fashions from Paris and London working from printed illustrations called fashion plates.

Today dressmaking as a broad sewing and seamstress career does not exist in the same way, dressmaking has become more formalized as Fashion Designer, Seamstresses or dressmakers now just specializing in wedding gowns alone.