“Your Range Is Your Edge”: Alice Kim on Building a Career Beyond One Lane

From fashion design to UX and entrepreneurship, Alice Kim has built a career by staying curious, solving problems, and refusing to fit into just one box.

Before Alice Kim knew what design software was, she was already designing.

Growing up, she turned old fabrics and towels into bags and clothes and spent hours drawing on Windows Paint and Corel, fashion became a way for her to express herself before she even had the words for it.

That early passion eventually took her to VCUarts and then NYC, where she arrived without a job lined up and began building her career in fashion. Years later, her path has expanded across design, UX, product strategy, and entrepreneurship, proving that a career doesn’t always have to fit neatly into one lane.

From Fashion to Something Bigger

After years in fashion, from unpaid internships to eventually leading design for global brands, Alice began noticing problems beyond the products themselves. Fashion moved quickly, but the systems behind design and production were not always as efficient. Naturally drawn to problem solving, she started mapping pain points and creating better systems for her teams.

That curiosity eventually introduced her to UX.

“It felt like a natural expansion of everything I had already been doing, just in a different medium,” she says.

Her path later expanded into product strategy and entrepreneurship, including co-founding a fashion tech platform connecting designers and brands with overseas factories. Building something from scratch, Alice says, taught her more than any job could, and made her fall in love with entrepreneurship.

Trust the Data, Own Your Work

Alice’s career has also shaped the way she thinks about leadership. While leading men’s underwear design for Levi’s across North America and Latin America, she found herself in an unusual position.

“I was a woman calling the shots on what men were going to wear under their pants,” she jokes. 

But behind the humor was an important lesson. Consumer data showed that women were a major driver of men’s underwear purchases, giving Alice the confidence to trust her research and stand behind her decisions.

Her approach to leadership became simple: know your consumer, trust the data, and own your work.

That confidence also influences how she approaches being a woman in fashion, technology, and entrepreneurship. In rooms that are still often dominated by men, Alice sees supporting other women as especially important. Rather than competing for space, she believes women can move further by sharing resources, opening doors, and celebrating each other’s successes.

Your Range is your Edge

For anyone who feels like their interests don’t fit neatly into one career path, Alice understands the feeling.

“Honestly, I still feel that way,” she says.

Her advice is to start exploring those interests anyway, even outside a nine-to-five.

“Do it tired. Do it scared. Do it imperfectly.” 

Over time, those different experiences and skills can begin to connect in ways that are difficult to see at the beginning.

“Your range is not a liability. It is your edge.” 

It’s an idea reflected throughout Alice’s own career. Fashion, consumer behavior, UX, product design, and entrepreneurship may look like different paths, but together they have shaped the way she approaches problems and what she wants to build next.

What comes Next

Right now, Alice is exploring a new idea inspired by something she sees increasingly around her: AI fatigue.

As technology becomes more present in everyday life, she believes people are beginning to crave something more human, real conversations, experiences, creativity, and connection. She is currently researching the idea of a community for creators who are building something meaningful outside their nine-to-five but haven’t necessarily found their people yet. 

She isn’t rushing the process.

“The last thing the world needs is another platform nobody asked for,” Alice says. 

For someone whose career began with making things by hand and grew across both physical and digital design, the next chapter feels fitting: building something intentional, human-first, and centered around the people it is meant to serve.

Editor: Michaeline Stephanie