Anna and Laura Tirocchi took a second leaf from the ready-made retailers' book in the mid-1920s, when they began to stock some ready-made items and to order high-end ready-made dresses for their customers, so that entire ensembles from underwear to hats and purses could be purchased at their shop. It is a maxim of retailing that the more one can sell to each customer, the higher the profits. The Tirocchi sisters offered their customers fine underwear imported from Italy and France, accessories, and table and bed linens. As seamstress and Tirocchi niece Emily Valcarenghi Martinelli put it: "Well, they used to sell everything and anything. When a customer wanted it, she had it." Another technique for competing with larger retailers was the use of "robes": pieces of beaded and/or embroidered cloth bearing the general outline of a gown, ready to be cut and fashioned into custom-tailored dresses. The Tirocchis ordered their "robes" from New York manufacturers/importers. Because much of the handwork had been done outside the shop, dresses made from "robes" were less expensive than comparable garments made entirely on the shop's premises. An extensive stock of "robes" was found in the Tirocchi workshop when its contents were inventoried in 1990-92 by RISD curators. These embellished dress pieces were especially well suited to the unconstructed chemise style of dress that became popular during the 1920s. The establishment also offered specialty services such as washing and restoring fine lace.(4)

The Tirocchi shop flourished despite its competitors. Anna, especially, was a canny businesswoman, but more crucial to the shop's appeal was the sisters' artistic and technical skill. They designed and supervised the construction of clothing that pleased and flattered their customers, and they were craftswomen of the first rank, probably the equal of any plying their trade in Europe or America. Ruth Trowbridge Smith remembered that when she wore her Tirocchi-made going-away suit on her honeymoon in Paris, people "thought it was the snappiest - where was it made they wanted to know."(5) Both the dressmakers and their customers valued this type of work, but they also rejected planned obsolescence, which became increasingly pervasive in the United States as the twentieth century progressed. They saw custom-made garments as long-term investments rather than throwaways. The fine apparel constructed by the Tirocchis was repeatedly retailored to fit changing fashions, social needs, and body shapes. Many wealthy clients shared the old-fashioned, thrifty mentality of Emily Valcarenghi Martinelli, who asked rhetorically, "Why throw anything away?" Mrs. Richard LeBaron Bowen typified this attitude when she purchased four new custom-tailored outfits in a single year, but also had four older ones made over.

Other aspects of their lives also predisposed Anna's clients to patronize the Tirocchi shop. As a group, their activities included a variety of social events, each occasion requiring its appropriate dress [fig. 37]. They demanded clothing that was not just suitable, but also attractive, fashionable, and new. Very few such customers held paying jobs, devoting themselves instead to the unpaid work that was a mark of their social class: home management, entertaining, and activity in clubs and social-service organizations. Among the shop's few wage-earning clients were Alice P. Brownell, an assistant court clerk, and sisters Anna and Mary Daley, who were nurses. It is not at all surprising that Brownell appears in the Tirocchi record books only for $15 worth of alterations in 1921, but it is notable that the Daley sisters together spent nearly $400 in the early 1920s for three custom-made garments and one "make-over." These expenditures probably made them the best-dressed nurses in the city, but perhaps they were not typical nurses. In 1919, Mary (and most likely her sister as well) traveled to Europe, and by 1923, she was writing to Anna Tirocchi from fashionable Brookline, Massachusetts, where she lived with her manufacturer husband.(6)