It is often thought that the Exposition des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes of 1925 popularized "moderne" design in America, but textiles in the Tirocchi shop belie this notion. Several modernist designs are documented in the pre-1920s inventory and others can be dated to well before 1925. The early modern design vocabulary had become known in this country first through posters, magazine illustrations, the decorative arts, and other media, and subsequently through painting and sculpture, which were largely seen for the first time at the Armory Show in New York in 1913. An examination of American textile samples from as early as 1910 by just one American manufacturer shows that modernism had already arrived in fabric produced for the mass market. In December 1910, at the very time that Paul Poiret and Charles Bianchini were adopting the "moderne" rose, the Arnold Printworks of North Adams, Massachusetts, was producing nearly seventy-five thousand yards of a roller print on scrim for curtains with the same flower [fig. 203]. Other stylized florals were also popular, perhaps based on Wiener Werkstätte textiles. That American printworks knew about avant-garde European textile design is certain. Many mills subscribed to pattern services. Claude Frères of Lyon supplied silk and woolen swatches on a monthly basis (many are preserved in the collection of the RISD Museum) to many manufacturers, including Arnold Printworks and the Empire Silk Company in Paterson, New Jersey. Publications such as Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, and the American Silk Journal also kept American manufacturers abreast of European design.

The skill with which Anna and Laura Tirocchi melded their taste with the already prevailing sense of the modern illustrates once again the reason for the survival of their business beyond the life of many other dressmaking establishments. Just as Anna Tirocchi took advantage of the changeover to ready-to-wear clothing by embracing it, she also adopted modernist French textiles as the basis for her custom trade, which she was able to continue well into the 1930s, although on a declining basis, until she was too old and too ill to sew. The last textiles in the Tirocchi shop date from the early 1940s. Silk and woolen samples, printed rayon textiles, zippers, and a few design folders advertising wartime production constitute a remarkable resource for this period, even as the Tirocchi shop closed and the objects in it were tucked away for posterity.