Surviving dresses from the 1920s discovered in the shop continue the theme of chemise and variations. The many beaded dresses purchased by the Tirocchis, perhaps more than any other form found in the shop, express the many facets of the art world that concerned artists and designers in the 1920s. This is because the chemise was a perfect foil for surface design. Taking advantage of the plain tubular shape by using it as a painter's canvas, each garment could be highly decorated in any of the numerous ways available to the "moderne" style. The Tirocchis' choices reflect their appreciation of such garments. Quintessentially "moderne" floral ornament appears often on these dresses [fig. 129]. Oriental and exotic sources remained popular: one exquisite pink-and-white beaded dress has a flower pattern in the Japanese taste [fig. 130]. Others have Persian or Egyptian imagery or motifs derived from textiles made at the Wiener Werkstätte [figs. 131-132] French designers were still looking in large part to international sources for early modern ornamentation, despite the upheavals of World War I.

The Tirocchis also sold opera coats, of which Anna apparently was especially fond, since several survived in the shop. Dating to about 1926 is a coat attributed to Paul Poiret with Persian patterning [figs. 133-134]. Anna marked several creations on the program of Poiret's salon, which she visited when she went to Paris in 1926-27, but she apparently did not purchase this coat at the time. It was probably sewn in Providence from a "robe" made in New York from a Poiret design, judging from the fact that the back panel of the coat has been incorrectly placed. It is upside-down, a rare example of an outright mistake on the part of the Tirocchi sewing staff [fig. 133]. A glamorous coat by Lucien Lelong from about 1926 has a fur collar and is made from an exquisite silk velvet printed with futurist swirls [fig. 135], while an elaborately sequined coat in pinkish beige dating to about 1926 has the shiny, metallic "machine-age" look [fig. 136].

Daywear from the 1920s is particularly interesting, since so little of it survives from this period in museum collections. A staple of Tirocchi sales was the lace or voile afternoon dress. These were actually imported from France, rather than copied in New York, where the hand-finishing required for transparent fabrics could not be done in a cost-effective way. Knitwear was also a prime seller and appeared in large numbers in the 1920s. The two-piece jersey sport dress popularized by Chanel and, above all, Patou, could also employ motifs that reflected contemporary art, and geometric, cubist-inspired motifs appeared often in these knits. In 1928, just after Elsa Schiaparelli brought out her famous trompe-l'oeil sweater paired with black skirt, the young Kathleen Fielding-Jones rushed to A. &L. Tirocchi to buy just such an outfit, surely a knock-off made in New York [see fig. 116, p. 153]. For her sweater, Schiaparelli had developed a new technique, that of using a flat, Armenian stitch that did not stretch and would hold the shape of a knit-in pattern. A 1930s sweater-and-skirt outfit found in the shop is made with a similar technique. Although machine-knit, it too holds its shape without stretching. The wonderful pattern is typical of the "machine-age" images of skyscrapers and of factories belching smoke, composed in a stepped design that reflects artworks of the time and echoes the forms of skyscrapers themselves [figs. 137-139].

Sports dressing became more popular in the 1920s, and the 1930s saw a diversification of forms from the simple two-piece jerseys of Patou and Chanel to specific garments for specific activities such as dancing, tennis, golf, and swimming. A wonderful example of a wool-jersey bathing suit from 1930 survived in the Tirocchi shop. Patterned with contrasting yellow and green areas, the suit has a felt jacket and large straw hat to match, both trimmed with huge "moderne" flowers in felt [fig. 96, p. 132; figs. 140-141]. This contemporary motif in bright, sun-filled colors reflects the lifestyles of the Tirocchi clients, who went off to their beach houses in summer or to the Caribbean in winter. A group of evening dresses found in the shop point to another side of the woman in motion. A handful of long, wide-skirted, narrow-waisted, colorful gowns of chiffon and other lightweight materials fairly scream "tango," bringing to mind the South American dances popular in the mid-1930s [fig. 142].

Reflecting streamlined 1930s design, as well as women's new social permission to wear trousers, is an outfit attributed to Molyneux, purchased with its own white sweater and jacket from the New York supplier Russell in 1933 [fig. 143]. The bell-bottomed pants and sweater were preserved in the shop, but the jacket was not to be found. Perhaps it was sold separately when the entire outfit failed to appeal to any client. Streamlined design is epitomized in the elaborately cut satin and velvet evening dresses of the 1930s. These pieced dresses are collages in themselves. Several examples of these cuts popularized by Madeleine Vionnet in the late 1920s and early 30s remained in the shop. All are stylishly svelte and gleamingly reflective, those two attributes of "machine-age" styling that applied to all the arts [figs. 144-145; see also fig. 112, p. 150, and fig. 123, p. 159].