Although frequent travel to Paris and New York is often mentioned with regard to Anna, there is no real documentation to verify annual "buying trips." Shop accounts and other written material in the Tirocchi Archive does indicate that she went to Europe on business in 1924, 1926- 27, 1931, and 1938. While Anna listed customs duties as an expense only in her 1926 tax calculations, there are substantial customs declarations in the Tirocchi Archive for merchandise purchased in Paris in both 1924 and 1926. In early 1927, as she continued the journey begun in 1926, Anna bought some merchandise in Florence. While attempting to recover her health during an extended European trip in 1938, she visited Nice, where she saw no dresses that she wanted and was put off by the prices and the prospect of paying customs on any imports. Anna's employee and niece Emily Valcarenghi Martinelli, other workers, and family members have mentioned frequent trips abroad, but extant evidence remains only for the four noted above. The easy acceptance of regular sojourns in European fashion capitals in the accounts of various dressmakers is not especially puzzling, as the self-aggrandizement of both client and provider was served by the general acceptance of claims of a dressmaker's close and regular connection to the centers of haute couture. Historian Lois Banner explores the role of dressmakers "as a power in the land" promoting standards of fashion and beauty in the United States: "...the most successful had...also mastered the relationship between salesperson and client and were effectively able to manipulate their patrons by a subtle mixture of flattery and imperiousness." These phrases perfectly encapsulate much of the surviving description of Anna as an artist-businesswoman.(13)

Accounts of Anna as an employer indicate she was respected, but was not particularly generous in her pay rates. Following the classic pattern for proprietors of successful shops, she hired young women or girls as "apprentices" and paid them low wages, a practice justified by the theory that the girls were learning a valuable trade. While in high school, Louisa Furia D'Amore, the daughter of Anna's cousin Maria and the granddaughter of Tito Tirocchi, worked briefly in the shop at her mother's urging, but Louisa recalled being frustrated by the slow pace at which Anna taught her the trade. While Anna kept her close by and exposed her to the business by allowing her to be present when clients were being served, she was not allowed to talk or report to others about what transpired. Louisa's duties consisted largely of picking up pins and sewing hooks on the insides of garments. She eventually left the shop to work in a handkerchief factory. Mary Rosa Traverso recalled that she herself began working in the shop at age sixteen but eventually moved on because she did not make much money. After leaving Anna's employ, Traverso worked twelve years for Mrs. Bernstein, who had a downtown shop in the Lapham Building on Westminster Street. On one occasion at least, Anna may have flouted child-labor and school-attendance laws when attempting to hire young girls.(14)

Anna paid more substantial wages to her most skilled workers. She is remembered as an exacting supervisor who insisted on high quality work from her employees. Both Louisa Furia D'Amore and Dr. Louis J. Cella, Jr., recalled her directing the third-floor workers by calling instructions down the hall from her room on days when she was too ill to leave her bed. Anna took an interest in the lives of her employees, advising them on the choice of a husband and providing trousseaus for some. Panfilo Basilico recalls being summoned to meet with Madam Tirocchi and to receive her approval before marrying one of the shop workers, Mary Riccitelli. Anna also provided a week's vacation at her summer retreat at Narragansett Pier for her "shop girls." They stayed in an apartment over the garage and had their meals in a log cabin attached to the main house. Beatrice Cella, Laura's daughter, anticipated their arrival for their week of vacation [figs. 67- 69], for "then the fun begins. We play tennis every day and have a fine time." "There [sic] doing all the cooking so I think it will be our holiday instead of theirs."(15)