Alice Estes Davis, Famed Disney Costume Designer, Dies at 93

The widow of one of Disney’s “Nine Old Men,” she worked on the “It’s a Small World” and “Pirates of the Caribbean” attractions at Disneyland.

Alice Estes Davis Courtesy Walt Disney Animation

Alice Estes Davis, who went from designing women’s lingerie and undergarments to coming up with costumes for Disney theme park attractions, films and TV shows, has died. She was 93.

Davis died Thursday at her Los Feliz home in Los Angeles, a spokesperson for Walt Disney Animation told The Hollywood Reporter.

Named a Disney Legend in 2004, she was married to animator Marc Davis — one of Disney’s legendary “Nine Old Men” — from June 1956 until his death in January 2000. (He became a Disney Legend in 1989, and the couple have their names on side-by-side windows on Main Street at Disneyland.)

Born Alice Estes on March 26, 1929, in Escalon, California, Davis in 1947 earned a scholarship to L.A.’s Chouinard Art Institute, and she attended night school to study animation. Marc, who had worked on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) and Bambi (1942), was an instructor at Chouinard, a renowned training ground for Disney artists.

She designed women’s lingerie for the Beverly Vogue & Lingerie House in L.A. and earned a reputation as an expert pattern maker and authority on uses of fabrics.

She received a call from Marc, who needed a costume designed and created for actress Helene Stanley to wear for live-action footage being filmed to inspire his animation of Princess Aurora in Sleeping Beauty (1959).

“Marc wanted to see how the skirt worked in live dance steps, and that was my first job at Disney,” she recalled. The gig led her to design costumes for the Disney live-action film Toby Tyler (1960), starring youngster Kevin Corcoran.

In 1963, Walt Disney himself recruited Davis to work on the “It’s a Small World” attraction for the 1964-65 World’s Fair in New York. She collaborated with art designer Mary Blair in researching, designing and supervising the creation of more than 150 costumes for the boat ride.

Meanwhile, she formulated costuming procedures, set up a manufacturing base and developed quality control refurbishing techniques that established the standards for three-dimensional characters in other rides and shows created by Disney.

In 1965, Davis translated the pirates’ attire from her husband’s original drawings for the costumes featured in the “Pirates of the Caribbean” ride at Disneyland. She also contributed to General Electric’s “Carousel of Progress” and the “Flight to the Moon” attractions.

In a statement, execs at The Walt Disney Family Museum in San Francisco noted that Davis was “always compassionate and altruistic” and supported it by participating in discussions, panels and special programs and donating artwork and objects.

“She was always Marc’s leading lady, and she will always hold a special place in our hearts,” they said. “We will miss her deeply.”