The shop of Anna and Laura Tirocchi was located on the second and third floors of an historic 1860s mansion at 514 Broadway, on the edge of Providence's thriving Italian neighborhood on Federal Hill. The house also served as the office of Laura Tirocchi's husband, Dr. Louis J. Cella, an American-born physician. The third floor of the house served as the workshop, where "the girls,"as they were called, fabricated, decorated, beaded, altered, and tailored clothing to the desires of the clientele. The essay by Pamela Parmal, "Line, Color, Detail, Distinction, Individuality: A. &L. Tirocchi, Providence Dressmakers"(chapter one of this book), explores the operations of the shop itself as clients came and went, studied the design books, and, with the valued advice of Anna and Laura Tirocchi, decided on the fashionable Paris clothes that they would order.

The women who were clients of the shop are known not only from the shop's written records enumerating the textiles and garments they used and preferred, sometimes over the span of twenty years, but also from their letters to Anna, photographs they sent to the Tirocchi sisters, and newspaper clippings that the Tirocchi sisters carefully saved in boxes. Then, as now, women were important consumers. This economic role has often been ignored or belittled, along with fashion itself, as feminine frivolity. In point of fact, women's decisions about their clothing and personal appearance document the culture of early twentieth-century America, including the female role of social arbiter, the emergence of women as community leaders in their own right, and their participation in the working world. The city of Providence, rich in traditional aspects of American culture, presented many opportunities for women of the new elite to become involved in the community through institutions such as the Providence Art Club, the Rhode Island Historical Society, and Rhode Island School of Design and its Museum of Art. RISD was itself founded by women of the Metcalf family, whose descendents still maintain a leadership role in all of these institutions. At least one member of the Metcalf family was a Tirocchi client. So were Mrs. Stuart (Martha L.) Aldrich and her daughter Louise, respectively the daughter-in-law and granddaughter of U.S. Senator Nelson Aldrich, sometimes referred to in his heyday at the turn of the century as "the Boss of the Senate."Louise, who became Mrs. Wallace Hoge in a Tirocchi wedding gown in 1931 [fig. 6], was a lifelong friend and substantial donor to the RISD Museum before her death in 1996.

All three daughters of Republican U.S. Senator LeBaron B. Colt - brother of Colonel Samuel Colt, owner of the vastly successful United States Rubber Company - were Tirocchi clients. A lawyer and jurist, LeBaron Colt served in the Rhode Island legislature from 1879 to 1881 and was elected to the United States Senate in 1913, two years after Nelson Aldrich resigned his Senate seat. LeBaron Colt's eldest daughter, Theodora, arrived on the Tirocchis' doorstep in June 1926, shortly after her divorce from Edwin A. Barrows of Providence, the president of Narragansett Electric Lighting Company. A year later, her youngest sister Elizabeth followed Theodora to her dressmakers' showroom. In 1929, the middle sister, Mary, wife of insurance tycoon Harold J. Gross of Providence, first appeared in the Tirocchi records.

Harriet Sprague Watson Lewis [fig. 7], a Tirocchi client in the late 1920s at the same time as the Colt sisters, kept a lifelong diary that happily allows a glimpse into the lives of these women and suggests why they purchased so many outfits from the Tirocchi shop.(2) Fifty-two years of age in 1926, Mrs. Lewis and her husband Jack, a successful shoe manufacturer, were members of a particular Providence social set made up of old families and newly wealthy industrialists. Harriet Lewis had been a friend of Theodora Colt since before her marriage, and Mary Colt Gross was among the women Harriet regularly met for "luncheon."According to Harriet's diary and to her scrapbook containing newspaper clippings of social events such as the "Welsh rarebit"parties surrounding her marriage in 1898, Harriet was also a friend of Abby Aldrich. Abby, in 1898, was being courted by John D. Rockefeller, Jr., then a student at Brown University (they were married in 1901). Abby's sister Lucy Truman Aldrich was also a friend. Lucy would later collect a superb group of Asian textiles, many of which she donated to RISD's Museum during her lifetime, with more entering the Museum holdings at her death. Both Abby and Lucy were sisters-in-law of the aforementioned Mrs. Stuart Aldrich, the wife of their youngest brother and one of the most faithful Tirocchi clients.