Carmela Spinelli

Carmela Spinelli is a fashion historian and curator whose work focuses on luxury education, museum practice, and engagement with the fashion industry. She brings more than two decades of experience spanning both academia and industry, with a focus on fashion and design history, museum programming, and higher education leadership and recruitment. She is currently serving as a consultant and guest curator for the Museum of Kansas City’s forthcoming exhibition, A Century of Style: Kansas City Fashion 1850–1950, scheduled to open in May 2027. She is also creating Luxury in Context, a graduate-level course developed for the Sotheby’s Institute of Art’s MA in Luxury Business program. 

Spinelli has contributed to the exhibition and catalog André Leon Talley: Style is Forever at the SCAD Museum of Fashion and Film and the SCAD Museum of Art. During her tenure at the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD), she served as Fashion Historian and Chair of Fashion and Accessory Design. In this capacity, she lectured internationally and collaborated with leading cultural institutions such as the Victoria and Albert Museum (London), the Musée des Arts Décoratifs (Paris), the Asian Civilisations Museum (Singapore), the Brooklyn Museum, the National Arts Club (New York), and the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art. 

Her curatorial practice includes serving as Guest Curator for the landmark exhibition Guo Pei: Couture Beyond at the Bowers Museum, as well as developing a specialized fashion and cultural history program for CHANEL Asia Pacific, aligning scholarly research with the brand’s heritage. 

Earlier in her career, Spinelli held positions at Céline and Saks Fifth Avenue and served as Associate Chair of Fashion Design at Parsons School of Design.  

She holds a master’s degree in the History of Decorative Arts and Curatorial Studies from Parsons School of Design in partnership with the Smithsonian’s Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum, where she was awarded the Lisa Taylor Fellowship.