As many fashion writers and designers have pointed out, custom dressmakers made their money on clients who ordered several garments at a time and also looked to the same shop for accessories; buying hats, gloves, and handbags to complete their outfits. The woman who came in and ordered a single dress was almost more trouble than her order was worth. The client ledger in the Tirocchi Archive bears this out. Many of the most faithful clients would order several new garments and remodeling of one or two older dresses at the same time.

When the Tirocchi sisters first set up their custom dressmaking business, women of a certain social and economic class expected to spend both time and money on being well dressed. The concern with exclusivity that echoes through magazine and newspaper articles of the 1910s could only work to the benefit of the Tirocchi shop and its Providence competitors. Drawing from the same illustrations of new modes as New York shops, the Tirocchis and their clients could interpret these modes in different color combinations or graft a detail from one design onto the silhouette of another. With her knowledge of the lifestyles and needs of her clients, Anna Tirocchi may also have truly designed garments for them: garments original both in conception and execution and, therefore, truly exclusive.

As the pace of life quickened in the 1920s and ready-to-wear clothing began to be better made and better fitting, many women who formerly had submitted to and even enjoyed the rituals of ordering a custom-made wardrobe began to incorporate ready-to-wear into their lives. As Bergdorf Goodman and Hattie Carnegie did in the 1920s, the Tirocchis began to carry ready-made garments in the shop to augment the custom trade and to encourage clients to spend more of their clothing allowance within the walls of a single shop. Perfumes, hats, handbags, and jewelry were made available. The Tirocchis even stocked imported table linens, catering to yet another need of the social class they served. Still, models from the Paris couturiers were also purchased by Anna Tirocchi to copy and sell.

On a much larger scale than the Tirocchis, most custom dressmakers and department or specialty stores who maintained custom salons depended on the ready-to-wear departments to actually pay the bills. Volume of merchandise sold and the markup on that merchandise were extremely important to the bottom line. Apparently, Bergdorf"s custom salon lost money for the store almost every year after 1929. It was "maintained for prestige," not income.(84) Given the apparent vagaries of Anna Tirocchi"s many business interests, her dressmaking shop perhaps provided her with an elevated social status that she was loath to discard in favor of more profitable, but less grand, ventures.(85)

The Tirocchi dressmaking shop was not unique in its inception or in its demise. All of the tricks and schemes that larger dressmaking concerns and retail shops used to stay abreast of the times and maintain some profitability were used by the Tirocchis. At this time, however, the volume and variety of documentary evidence surviving the closure of the shop remain unique. In total it indicates the need for a reevaluation of American dressmakers and the American dress industry in the first half of the twentieth century.