Dressmaking as a trade in Providence had reached its peak in 1906, when 890 practitioners were listed in the City Directory. This was six times the number of dressmakers recorded in 1880 (146). By 1910, the number had decreased to 754. Anna thus built her successful business in the context of a declining market for custom-made women's clothing. Increasing competition from the ready-made clothing market and department-store dressmaking departments was driving a large number of independent dressmakers from the trade. During the next twenty years their numbers continued to drop rapidly, falling to 466 in 1920 and to 245 in 1930. By 1937, dressmakers in Providence numbered 144, equal to the 1880 level, a mere sixteen and a half percent of the 1906 peak.

In the face of competition, the Tirocchi sisters distinguished themselves through the prime location of their shop, their self-identification as makers of "gowns," and the employ of upwards of a dozen women in their operation. According to the family account, the sisters' vocational preparation resulted from contacts their mother had made while working as a cook in Rome, where Anna and Laura became apprenticed to a dressmaker whose customers were upper-class city dwellers. In Providence, Anna - the driving force in the enterprise - quickly demonstrated her skill at cultivating an exclusive clientele, as well as her dressmaking artistry.(11)

Dressmaking was characterized by features not common to other occupations popular with immigrants in the U.S. Producers and consumers joined together, often across class lines, to create original and highly personal products. Dressmakers found that social distance from their clients presented challenges to their free assertion of creativity and taste. Upper-class clients did not necessarily feel comfortable relying on their social inferiors in so intimate an area as fashion and also may have experienced some discomfort in exposing their bodies and tastes to tradeswomen. Dressmakers often sought to camouflage or reduce perceived class differences by adopting and projecting characteristics that reinforced their status and authority as artists and experts, thus clouding their working-class and immigrant origins. One of the most common strategies was to assert personal ties to the centers of high fashion, especially Paris. Claims of frequent trips to international style centers and the appropriation of the title "Madam" or "Madame" were used to distinguish a "gown maker" from her more common sister artisans who did not enjoy upper-class patronage. Anna employed both of these tactics. She decorated the mansion on Broadway with fine European antiques and other furnishings. Her shop stationary in the 1920s was headed by a blue band highlighting the words "Di Renaissance," which suggested the European connection she sought to establish, and she did nothing to undermine the family's idea that while in Rome she had been employed by a dressmaker to the queen of Italy. Her full-page advertisement in the program for the 1928 Junior League presentation of the musical comedy Oh Boy [figs. 65- 66] proclaimed "Exclusive Importations of Sportswear Coats and Suits" and included the following announcement: "Madam Tirocchi is now abroad attending the opening and selecting models and merchandise from different countries, for the Spring and Summer, which, by invitation, will be shown at the end of March."(12)