Noel B. Corbin

Education

Teaching

TXMI 4290 / 6290: Apparel Studio Design (Spring 2025)

Prior Professional Positions

Awards

Advisory Committee

Dr. Monica Sklar

Dr. Sha'mira Covington

Dr. Giovanni Dazzo

Ivan Ingermann

Georgia native, Noel Corbin, began her studies in costume design at the age of 14 in community theater. Having found her gift for bringing stories to life through textiles at a young age, obtained her undergraduate degree in Fashion Design from Georgia Southern University. Noel later moved to New York City, where she began her design career in women’s denim and plus-size fashion, before continuing her education at New York University in the Visual Culture: Costume Studies MA program. Her experience and scholarship landed her the opportunity to work as a contract research assistant for the Black Fashion Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History & Culture. During this time, she also co-curated and mounted her first fashion exhibition at Weeksville Heritage Center and Museum, in Brooklyn, New York, broadening her knowledge in fashion & costume history. In 2017, she completed her graduate degree and research contract and relocated to Los Angeles to work in costume design in film and television. In 2024, Noel enrolled at the University of Georgia to pursue a PhD in Fashion with a focus on history and culture. While at UGA, she has taught Apparel Studio Design and has been the teaching assistant for History of Dress, while teaching summer sewing workshops at the Lucy Craft Laney Museum of Black History. Noel has over 15 years of professional fashion retail, design, and research experience with companies such as Vogue, ABC/ Disney, Netflix, and Time Magazine. She specializes in period costume and dress research in Black communities. She is currently the curator of the GAM 2025 award winning exhibition, Live Lovely for Excellence: The Rosa T. Beard Debutante Club exhibition, mounted annually at the Lucy C. Laney Museum of Black History in Augusta, Georgia. Her newest fashion exhibition, Fashioning the Timeless Bride: The Life and Career of Anne Barge, opens spring of 2026 at UGA’s Special Collection Library.

Current Research

Noel's current research centers women through meaning-making of cotillion dress in Black communities, Endarkened Feminist Epistemology in fashion work, and period costume research and reproduction for theater, film, and public history.  

Job Description

Noel Corbin has experience in facilitating fashion and costuming programing at museums, highschools, and community centers in New York and Georgia. While at the University of Georgia, she has performed as a Teaching Assistant for TXMI 3230: Pop Culture & Fashion, TXMI 4290/6290: Fashion History, and guest lectured in Fashion Histoy and Retailing Apparel & Textiles. Spring 2025, she was the Instructor of Record for TXMI 4280/ 6280: Apparel Design Studio, teaching undergraduate and graduate students fashion illustration, sewing, and draping/ pattern-making.