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As purchasers of fine merchandise for their business, Anna and Laura Tirocchi received their share of promotional material from vendors. The Tirocchi Archive contains two folders of this material, perhaps a hundred or so individual pieces. The range in quality and visual interest is wide. Some are graphically well-designed cards announcing fall showings, new lines, etc. Others are quite plain, printed in black-and-white. The material ranges from cards to posters to broadside advertisements. The fancier ones are printed in silver or gold; some are hand-colored in vivid colors; some are die-cut into dramatic shapes. Some are even small catalogues, not to be confused with the larger Model Books used for ordering garments. Several Christmas cards from vendors are also included in this cache of material, and there are invitations to suppliers’ exclusive trunk showings in hotel suites rented for the occasion. These promotional pieces announce things like the following: There is no way of knowing if Anna and Laura did go to New York City to some of these shows. They must have received far more of this material than they saved, so it is hard to know why these particular pieces were kept. Even though this collection is relatively small, it is still representative and, as such, valuable to the curators and scholars researching A. & L. Tirocchi and the fashion industry in the first half of the twentieth century. ^back to top
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