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Allison Sugarbaker is a character in the television series, Designing Women. She is played by actress Julia Duffy.

Allison is a petite woman, who buys the shares of the Sugarbaker design firm from her cousin, Suzanne Sugarbaker when the former moves to Japan with her mother. Allison seems to think that she is better than she really is, and sometimes goes to wild lengths to prove it, even going so far as to outright lie.

From the moment she arrives in Atlanta, Georgia, she causes trouble for everyone. She and Anthony Bouvier begin a semi-War of the Roses, over Suzanne's house, which she unwittingly leased to both of them. Not to mention she brings in an extremely huge desk replete with a huge ferris wheel rolodex, which completely takes up much of the downstairs work area of Sugarbakers.

Because she begins to pull rank and criticize everyone, she doesn't start off on the right foot with her cousin, Julia Sugarbaker. In fact, Julia's dream is to embarrass and annihilate her in front of a huge crowd at Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium, as she pointedly tells her in her first appearance.

She does however gain a friend and becomes a mentor to Carlene Dobber, the newly hired sister of Charlene Frazier Stillfield; although at times she can be rather nasty towards her. Her sunny personality grates on Allison so much that she sometimes snappishly calls her Mrs. Rogers. She doesn't think too highly of Julia's friend, Bernice Clifton, though, or of anyone else for that matter.

Allison grew up in the south, but attended school at Wellesley College, and then worked in New York City most of her life. She was a seeing eye person for a blind older woman, then worked for a fabric company as well. She helped put away someone who had committed insider trading. Then the former paramour (played by Miss Duffy's real-life husband, Jerry Lacy) asked her to marry her, and then stood her up at the altar as retribution. One of her lies was that she was supposed to be a bridesmaid at Marla Maples wedding to Donald Trump. That was proven to be a lie when she put off the wedding.

Like Suzanne, she had very limited experience in decorating. However, unlike Suzanne, Allison is political, presumably a conservative, which explains the extreme animosity between her, Julia and Mary Jo on the Clarence Thomas confirmation. (Julia and Mary Jo, both unabashedly liberal, thought Anita Hill was telling the truth, and Allison believed that she was lying). Of course, Thomas was confirmed. During her birthday party, the gloating Allison rubbed it in, which truly set off Mary Jo. Truly furious, she went off on a diatribe that would have made Julia, "The Terminator" proud. She and Julia were in make-up like Joan Crawford and Bette Davis, having been at a dress rehearsal for a play.

After a year of her obnoxiousness (she has OPD, Obnoxious Personality Disorder), she pulls out her financial backing to get a more lucrative Victoria's Secret franchise back in New York, thus placing Sugarbaker's into near-bankruptcy; only being saved by her replacement, Bonnie Jean "B.J." Poteet.