Alice Williamson | Creative direction & design

Imaginative, playful, cross-disciplinary


I love making things: Captivating audience and exciting minds to new ideas through creativity. I create and lead engaging concepts, products, and experiences across brands, ads, toy design, fashion, editorial, and theatre.

The Beginning


I started my professional career as a ballet dancer, although my design and product creation journey began long before that. I’ve been serious about design, performance, and product development from my very beginning! ( Not a joke, ask my mum.) I am resourceful, good at finding magic and opportunity in the everyday.

An Anecdote


For the amusement of myself and my colleagues I used to sew tiny mice out of my pointe shoes scraps side-stage in the theatre. My work ended up getting noticed by Jellycat Toys. I freelanced for them as a creative designer for four years and ideated and designed their most successful concept of all time: the Amuseables. Of course, I also designed ballerinas for them, as I still was one.

Resourceful


Cutting my teeth in business, design, production, strategy and creative etc. I founded and have run my successful international dancewear brand DBA since I was 20. (Closed March 2025) I ran this alongside my international dance career as a ballet dancer for a decade. It gave me a name and a place to create and connect when I was a dancer and a place springboard from when I retired from performing.

Some things I’ve done


I’ve designed and worked across theatre and dance, directing, designing and producing for shows, galas, and film. In addition to my design work for DBA, I am always interested in the confluence of innovation and myth(!), particularly design that works in harmony with the environment. I’ve been an artist in residence at Harvard University, programming and choreographing a ballet dancer and a robot to dance. I also ran workshops there. I’ve worked across fashion and editorial as a costume designer and photographer. These fashion and editorial collaborations were mostly with my own brand DBA, which at (17 years), has been noticed by Vogue Italia ‘hot stuff’, gone relatively viral in East Asia and received mentoring whilst representing UKFT at Paris Fashion Week to name a few things.

Get in touch 

I love to create fresh, creative work that reaches people with a skin-tingling, butterfly-inducing surge of real-life-ness. 

If you’d like to discuss a project—I’m all ears

Features

Vogue Italia, Fjord review, Danza danza, Southbank centre, YLE news, Clash mag 

Residencies

Harvard University: ArtLab, Norn Berlin

Some Spaces

The Royal Opera House, Barbican, Southbank Centre, UK 

Deutsche Oper, Komische Oper, Schiller Theatre, Germany

Bunka Kaikan, Japan. 

Cultural Centre, Hong Kong. 

Cirko, Finland.

Select Clients

Employers, clients and brand collaborations in-house, and otherwise. Creative contributions across private, public spaces.

Jelly Cat, Freed of London, BBC, NHS, Royal Opera House, Royal Academy of Dance, Kinetic Letters, Norn, In Focus Media, Taschen, Carry on Publishing, Jo Malone, Loreal, Lillet, Lulu Lemon, Vichy, Adidas, Palias, Bally, O’Pioneers, Hiro Robtics, Bose, Osteo-path, SLC, Edinburgh Fringe, Makeshift Company, Hamilton Cristou Productions, Southbank Centre, Agit Cirk, Staatsballett Berlin, Northern Ballet, Hong Kong Ballet, Joffrey Ballet, Harvard Art Lab

Shop-able products

Since closing my online store (March 2025) DBA products are no longer available designedbyalice.co.uk but you can probably still finds pieces in stores in Korea, Japan, China, Canada and the UK

My work for Jelly Cat toys can be found online and in stores internationally.