(To print choose "print" from the file menu of your browser. To return to the site press the "back" button.)

514 BROADWAY: VENDOR PROMOTIONAL MATERIAL

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:

- For the American Resort Season
- Spring and Summer Collection of Street, Afternoon and Evening Dresses, 1940
- Announcing the season’s distinguished French imports from leading couturiers
- Our summer collection of tailored clothes for sports, town, and country, will be shown from March 15.
- Dresses for southern and cruise wear commencing Tuesday, November 14^th, 1939
- We invite you to review the smartest collection of prints, laces and plain fabrics . . . striking new notes of fashion distinction, now on display at our showroom.

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.