A & L Tirocchi Dressmakers Project
A website to accompany the RISD Museum exhibition, From Paris to Providence: Fashion, Art, and the Tirocchi Dressmakers’ Shop 1915-1947, including scholarly essays and narrative text on fashion and social history, databases of artifacts and information about the clients and workers associated with the shop, and curricular materials for middle school students.
Anna and Laura Tirocchi were two Italian dressmakers who worked in Providence, RI during the first part of the twentieth century. The contents of the Tirocchi sisters’ dressmaking shop were given to the RISD Museum in 1989. The shop had been untouched since it closed in 1947 and contained haute couture garments and fabrics along with ledgers, correspondence, and other records of the art, craft, and business of fashion from the first half of the twentieth century. In January 2001, the RISD museum mounted an exhibition that showcased not only the fashions and materials, but also highlighted the collection as an unparalleled resource for understanding many wide-ranging historical issues, including Italian immigration, women as workers and consumers, and the transition from hand production of garments to ready-to-wear clothing.
STG developed an extensive web site to accompany the Rhode Island School of Design Museum’s exhibition, based on a script initially drafted by Art historian Margaret Blagg Weaver. The site includes the material that formed part of the exhibition. It also contains searchable databases of business records and customer correspondence, as well as lesson plans.
A & L Tirocchi Dressmakers Project is a project of STG (Computing and Information Services)
Contributors to this project include Susan Hay (External Consultant), Sara Grady (STG), David Reville (STG)
Funding for this project came from National Council for the Humanities (mainly for the RISD exhibition, but also for the website) Rhode Island Committee for the Humanities (mainly for the website)