Alice Estes Davis

Alice Estes Davis (born 1929) is an American costume designer. She is most famous for her work with Walt Disney, who employed her to develop costumes for films, television, and theme parks. She was married to Marc Davis, a Disney animator and Imagineer. Alice was named a Disney Legend in 2004.

Early Life and Career

Alice was born Alice Estes in Escalon, California. She was a talented artist in high school and received a scholarship from the Long Beach Art Association to study at the prestigious Chouinard Art Institute. She studied fine art, but soon became interested in animation. Alice recalls that she was one of the few women at Chouinard studying animation.

One of Alice's instructors at Chouinard urged her to try costume design instead of animation. She tried it and soon developed an affinity for pattern-making and costume design. She also developed a respect for one of her other instructors - her future husband, and fellow Disney Legend, Marc Davis.

After graduation, Alice began her career designing women's lingerie for the Beverly Vogue & Lingerie House in Los Angeles. Because of her skill, she quickly rose through the ranks to head designer. She designed two lines of fashion lingerie herself. Alice earned a reputation within the fashion community for her pattern-making skills and her expertise with different types of exotic fabrics.

Early Disney efforts

In the mid-1950s, Alice received a call from Marc Davis. He needed a costume for dancer Helene Stanley to wear as she performed live-action reference footage for the animation of Princess Aurora in "Sleeping Beauty"; Marc wanted to see how the skirt flowed and bunched as Stanley moved about in order to draft accurate animation. During this project, she and Marc grew closer and eventually married in June of 1956.

Walt Disney saw the two newlyweds at a Los Angeles restaurant one night and immediately took a liking to Alice and her quality work. Walt hired her as a costume designer for the 1960 Disney feature "Toby Tyler". Alice also aided in the design of costumes for various other Disney television shows.

Imagineering

In 1963, Walt came to Alice with a rather novel assignment - assisting artist Mary Blair in designing the costumes for the Audio-Animatronic children of Walt's 1964/1965 New York World's Fair attraction, "it's a small world". Alice researched the different cultures and regions being represented and translated the attire customs into over 150 different costumes. Her other work for the Fair included the period-specific costumes for the General Electric Carousel of Progress.

During the "small world" project, Alice established an AA figure costume manufacturing area, quality control system, and refurbishing techniques at WED Enterprises in Glendale, California. These systems and techniques are still used today by Imagineers and maintenance staff at the Disney Theme Parks worldwide.

In 1965, Alice says she "went from sweet little children, to dirty old men overnight". Walt assigned her to create the costumes for the AA characters that would inhabit the Pirates of the Caribbean attraction. Alice created 47 different costumes - each one period-specific to the 17th and 18th centuries, but still had a "Disney flair" to them. Pirates of the Caribbean opened in 1967, and remains a Disney Theme Park favorite to this day. Because of her versatility, she also designed the costumes for the Mission Control AA figures in the revamped Flight to the Moon attraction the same year as Pirates.

Following Marc's lead, Alice retired from WED in 1978, but still consults on various projects for The Walt Disney Company. She also makes appearances at Disney-related events and fan meet-and-greets. Her marriage to Marc ended with his death in 2000.

ources

* [http://legends.disney.go.com/legends/detail?key=Alice+Davis Alice Davis at the Disney Legends website]

* Disney, Walt (prod.) & Sklar, Martin (writer) (1967): "From Pirates of the Caribbean to the World of Tomorrow". Television show.