Ma tante connaît une couturière qui travaille très bien, et l’architecte lui demande de réparer un rideau.

French uses two different verbs where English often just uses know:

• connaître = to know a person, place, or thing by familiarity
• savoir = to know a fact, or to know how to do something

So Ma tante connaît une couturière means My aunt knows a seamstress in the sense that she is acquainted with her.

Also, connaît is the third-person singular present form of connaître, matching ma tante.

Une couturière means a seamstress or dressmaker: a woman who sews professionally, especially clothing or fabric items.

A few useful points:

• It is a feminine noun, so it takes une
• The masculine form is often couturier
• In this sentence, the feminine form matters because it connects later with lui, meaning to her

Here, qui is a relative pronoun meaning who.

It links une couturière to extra information about her:

• une couturière = a seamstress
• qui travaille très bien = who works very well

So qui is the subject of travaille and refers back to couturière.

A useful comparison:

• la couturière qui travaille = the seamstress who works
• la couturière que je connais = the seamstress that/whom I know

So qui is used when the relative pronoun is the subject of the verb.

Travaille is the verb travailler in the present tense, and très bien is an adverbial expression meaning very well.

So literally:

• travaille = works
• très bien = very well

Together, qui travaille très bien means who works very well or, more naturally in context, who is very good at her work.

In other words, it does not just mean that she is busy working; it suggests she works skillfully.

Before a vowel sound, French usually contracts le or la to l’. This is called elision.

So:

• le architecte → l’architecte
• la architecte → l’architecte

That means l’architecte can be masculine or feminine. On its own, l’ does not tell you the gender.

In this sentence, the gender of architecte is not made explicit. You would need more context to know whether the architect is male or female.

Here, lui is an indirect object pronoun meaning to him or to her.

In this sentence:

• l’architecte lui demande... = the architect asks him/her...

Most likely, lui refers to une couturière, because she is the person the architect would logically ask to repair a curtain.

Important point: lui can mean either to him or to her, so French does not distinguish gender here. You figure it out from context.

This comes from the French pattern:

• demander à quelqu’un de + infinitive

It means to ask someone to do something.

So:

• demander à la couturière de réparer un rideau
• = to ask the seamstress to repair a curtain

When à la couturière is replaced by a pronoun, it becomes lui:

• L’architecte demande à la couturière de réparer un rideau
• L’architecte lui demande de réparer un rideau

So the à is still part of the structure, but it is absorbed into the pronoun lui.

Because after de in this structure, French uses the infinitive:

• demander à quelqu’un de faire quelque chose
• demander à quelqu’un de réparer quelque chose

So réparer stays in its base form, meaning to repair.

This is very similar to English:

• asks her to repair a curtain

French does not conjugate the second verb here, because the only fully conjugated verb in that part of the clause is demande.

The person expected to repair the curtain is the one referred to by lui.

Most naturally, that is the seamstress:

• My aunt knows a seamstress who works very well, and the architect asks her to repair a curtain.

That reading makes sense because a seamstress is someone who works with fabric.

Technically, lui could refer to another singular person mentioned earlier, but the most likely interpretation is the seamstress, not the aunt.

Un is the indefinite article, meaning a or an.

So un rideau means a curtain, not a specific curtain already identified.

If the speaker meant a particular, already-known curtain, French would more likely use le rideau.

So the sentence presents the curtain as not yet specifically identified.

Yes. The main verbs are in the present tense:

• connaît = knows
• travaille = works
• demande = asks

This is a straightforward present-tense sentence describing:

1. a general fact or current situation: my aunt knows a seamstress
2. a description of that seamstress: who works very well
3. another present action: the architect asks her to repair a curtain

French often uses object pronouns where English also would:

• l’architecte demande à la couturière de réparer un rideau
• l’architecte lui demande de réparer un rideau

Using lui avoids repeating à la couturière and makes the sentence more natural.

This is very common in French, especially with verbs that take à before a person:

• parler à quelqu’un → lui parler
• téléphoner à quelqu’un → lui téléphoner
• demander à quelqu’un → lui demander