The extravagance of this deep red velvet bodice suggests that it would have been made and worn for a formal evening occasion. Inside the bodice, stamped on the waist tape is a label that reads ‘Alice Mason, 4 New Burlington Street’. The Alice Mason dressmaking establishment was started by Alice March (1823-1901) who was born in the Hammersmith area of London in 1823, to James March and Mary Thatcher. James worked as a ‘Fruiterer’ which is a nineteenth-century term for a fruit dealer. In 1850, Alice married Henry Bailey Mason (1825-1891) a silk mercer from Newcastle. Alice and Henry were first recorded in the 1851 census at 442 Strand in London. At this time, they employed eleven young women as milliners. For most of the nineteenth century, ‘milliner’ was a term used to describe a designer and maker of women’s dresses, rather than referring to hatmakers. In 1861 the business was located at 59 Pall Mall in St. James. At this time the couple had three sons, Ernest born in 1856, Cecil born in 1859, and Gerald born in 1863. Cecil would go on to join the family business as a silk dealer. By 1870, the business would occupy its final, and most notable address, at 4 New Burlington Street. This address runs between Regent Street and Saville row, placing it in the heart of London’s fashionable retail district. It was at this address that the firm would reach the height of its fame.

Alice was a 'court dressmaker', able to provide the garments women required for royal presentations, making her designs highly sought after by the elite of London society. Many drawings of her dresses were published in the high-end lady’s magazine The Queen. It was common in the nineteenth century for the outfits of well-known women attending high profile events to be published for popular consumption, just as today. At the famous fancy dress ball held by the Duchess of Devonshire on July 9th, 1897, the shop made at least eighteen outfits. She made the Duchess of Roxburgh a dress in the style of a Lady in Queen Elizabeth I’s court, and she dressed Daisy Heinrich, the Princess of Pless, as the Queen of Sheba. The shop made wedding trousseaus for many young ladies of society including Lady Sybil Fane, Countess of Westmorland, and Lady Edith Ward, the daughter of the Countess of Dudley. Mason also frequently made costumes for theatre and opera performances like the dresses worn by actor Mrs. Patrick Campbell when she played the lead character in ‘Magda’. There are surviving photographs of Campbell wearing her costumes from this production.

Henry Mason passed away in 1891 and Alice Mason passed away ten years later in 1901. Her stock was purchased and sold at a discount by the company Peter Robinson’s located on Oxford Street. After Mason’s death, dressmaking continued to be the focus at 4 New Burlington Street because in 1902 the premises became the first London branch of the well-known couturier Charles Frederick Worth (1825-1895). Before the House of Worth moved into this space, there was likely already strong business links between the company and Alice Mason as she was one of a few London dressmakers who were advertised as being able to provide licensed copies of designs from Paris.