Susan Porter Benson's essay (chapter two), "Clients and Craftswomen: The Pursuit of Elegance,"discusses the relationship between the workers in the shop, many of whom were Italian or of Italian descent, and the wealthy American-born clients for whom they performed the delicate work of sewing, embroidery, and beadwork. Providence city records show that employees of A. &L. Tirocchi were women from thriving Italian American families. Many came to the shop already in command of considerable needle skills. Annual city directories, marriage and death records, and the 1920 federal census reveal that at least some (and probably most) of the families of the women who worked in the Tirocchi shop had come to Providence at least ten years previously and already were entrepreneurs and homeowners, both traditional goals of Italian immigrants.(3) Some were related to the Tirocchi sisters, such as Emily Valcarenghi Martinelli, who worked in the shop at various times throughout its existence and who was the daughter of Anna and Laura's sister, Eugenia Tirocchi Valcarenghi.

Workers in the shop drew weekly wages, and Anna and Laura gave close attention to the hours and productivity of their employees, as detailed by the pay books.(4) For the young Italian American workers in the Tirocchi shop, this was still appropriate "women's work," not the kind of work in a factory setting that other Italian women in Rhode Island were entering.(5 )The sewing rooms in the Tirocchi house were safe areas where women were sheltered from exploitation and bad behavior and were under the supervision of two female members of their own community. Interviews recorded with surviving workers indicate that, in the employees' minds, the Tirocchi establishment was far from a sweatshop, in contrast to the situations of many workers in the garment industry at that time, or indeed in the early twenty-first century. Those interviewed regarded it as a family, and they loved the beautiful fabrics with which they worked. Their reactions to the sometimes peremptory clientele were another story.

When the Tirocchi sisters first arrived in Providence, they settled into a neighborhood in the Silver Lake section, composed of interrelated families mostly from southern Italy. Much of the shop's eventual work force also lived in Silver Lake and had themselves adjusted from the economy and environment of a traditional Italian society to that of modern America. In this book's third chapter, "Strategies for Success: The Tirocchis, Immigration, and the Italian American Experience," John Briggs recounts the story of the Tirocchi family's arrival in America as part of a chain migration partially financed by several of the earliest immigrants, who earned enough to summon their families by laying railroad track in northern New England and Canada or by working as laborers in Providence, as documented by personal papers, including correspondence with family members in Italy; family photographs; and the oral histories of surviving family members.

Anna and Laura Tirocchi at first glance seem unlikely candidates for fashion advisers to very wealthy, very social, and very American clients. The sisters were born before 1890 in Guarcino, Italy, a tiny town in the hills southeast of Rome. In the early years of this century, Guarcino was still isolated from the outside world. Only when the sisters revisited the town in the 1930s did they find a narrow-gauge railway connecting the town to the provincial capital of Frosinone.(6) According to family legend, the sisters were taught the dressmaking trade in Rome before coming to the United States and settling in Providence. Their first shop was located in the Butler Exchange building on Westminster Street, where they employed eleven young women between ca. 1911 and 1915. In 1915, Laura Tirocchi married. In the same year, Anna purchased the house on Broadway and opened the shop on its second floor. By this time, the sisters had already developed their wealthy clientele.