Over the years, Harriet Sprague Watson Lewis mentions at least ten women who were Tirocchi clients, including Helen Merriman (listed as Mrs. Bruce Merriman in the Tirocchi records), Ella Fielding-Jones, Mrs. Harry Horton, Mrs. Frank D. Lisle, Mrs. Henry Lampher, Ann Kilvert (who married Howard Merriman in a Tirocchi wedding gown in 1931), and even one of the Daley sisters - Anna and Mary, nurses dressed by the Tirocchis - who attended Harriet Lewis after her husband died suddenly in 1930. Annie Watson Fletcher, Harriet's sister and the wife of Charles H. Fletcher, was a customer in the late 1920s. Isabel Watson, wife of Harriet's brother Byron S. Watson, had been patronizing the Tirocchi shop since 1918 at least and was one of the most fashionable clients until Anna Tirocchi became too ill to work in the early 1940s.

Harriet Sprague Watson Lewis lived in a whirlwind of social activity. In 1926, when she started coming to the Tirocchi shop, Harriet and Jack Lewis began the year with the Aldrich's dance at the Biltmore Hotel in downtown Providence. Every evening in early January a dinner party was scheduled at a home of one of their friends. Later in the winter season, there were dinner dances, birthday parties, luncheons at the Providence Art Club, Bridge Club and Junior League meetings, theater parties, movie-goings, friends to dinner, and evenings of poker and "auction"(bridge). All required particular clothing. Harriet Lewis's favorite charity was the Providence Lying-In Hospital, which she served as a Board member through many hours of meetings yearly. For each she would have worn a different "good"outfit. Often in March or April, the Lewises as a couple or Harriet alone would travel to Europe (in 1926 she went with friends to Spain, Monte Carlo, and Cannes) or south to the Caribbean: special traveling clothes were considered necessary. Summers were spent at the Lewis farm in Narragansett, where the social calendar continued full tilt with dinners and poker parties. The house was always full of people, either friends of the Lewises or of their three boys, then in their teens and twenties. It was a rare evening when there was quiet time at home together for the Lewis family.

This life was shared by a number of Tirocchi clients, many of whom are mentioned in Harriet Lewis's diary as participants in these same events. The 1920 census reveals that these women, friends and members of a very social coterie, were East Side neighbors as well. Harriet Lewis lived at 2 Benevolent Street; her sister-in-law Isabel Watson resided at number 20. Backing up to these houses was "Clients' Row"on George Street, where, in large mansions [figs. 8-9] opposite the entrance to the main green at Brown University, lived Lucy Wall, Edna Miller, and May Nicholson. May was the wife of Samuel Mowry Nicholson, President of Nicholson File, one of the largest companies in Rhode Island and one of the most successful machine toolmakers in the country. One block away across the Brown green on Waterman Street was the Providence residence of Senator LeBaron Colt, father of Theodora Colt Barrows, Mary Colt Gross, and Elizabeth Colt Anthony.

The exquisite textiles and clothing found in the Tirocchi shop are examples of what these women, who wielded considerable social and financial power, thought appropriate for their own active lives and circumstances. The profusion of client ledgers, correspondence, bills, clippings, and photographs reveal vital women with lives rich in social contacts and artistic interests who also had the time, motivation, and opportunity to move into active roles in their communities, all the while managing their elaborate homes, staffs of servants, and complicated household routines.

Many details relating to the rites of passage and pursuits of these women are illuminated by the records and by the garments made in the Tirocchi shop for confirmations, weddings, and other festivities. For example, shop records list the garments sewn for brides and their wedding parties: in the case of Ann Kilvert for her marriage to Howard Richmond Merriman in 1931, the purchase of an imported gown by the fashionable English designer Lucile and its alteration with long train and "special made sleeves by Mr. John's in N.Y."at a cost of $288. The Tirocchi Archive also includes photographs and clippings of this wedding party. Ann Kilvert Merriman (now deceased) gave the still-cherished wedding dress to the Museum when the Tirocchi shop came to light.