About the Archive
We’re on a mission to build the world’s largest living collection of beauty culture.
It’s estimated that less than 1% of recorded history is about women. At a time when cultural records are vanishing, algorithms erase yesterday’s stories, and no country in the world has yet achieved gender equality, women’s voices risk being lost.
The MECCA Archive preserves perspectives through a living History of Beauty and an evolving series of annual Chapters.
Every archive needs a compass. Ours is built on five guiding principles – big ideas drawn from feminist, decolonial and cultural theory – that help us constantly ask: What gets remembered? And why?
We’ve been inspired by:
- Dr. Diana Taylor (Performance and Repertoire)
- Dr. Ann Cvetkovich (An Archive of Feelings)
- Dr. Kate Eichhorn (Feminist Archiving)
- Ariella Aïsha Azoulay (Decolonising the Archive)
- Michel Foucault (Power/Knowledge)
This framework and these thinkers have helped shape how we design the Archive, decide what belongs in it and shape new contributions.
The Archive is a living, breathing story of beauty, told by those who’ve shaped it. This isn’t a museum. It’s a movement.
We’re making space for stories too often left out of beauty’s official record: Blak, Māori, migrant, queer, disabled, plus-size and youth communities.
We gather first-person reflections, oral histories, visuals and commentary to create an Archive that’s co-authored by the community it represents.
After six months of digging through cultural histories, we spotted the gaps - the stories missing from the record. Now we’re inviting you to help us fill them, so the Archive reflects beauty in all its diversity.
1. Celebrate Everyday Entrepreneurs
Send us stories or photos of small salons, makers, and community beauty businesses.
2. Preserve First Nations Perspectives
Contribute reflections and rituals from Blak and Māori communities across time.
3. Share Migrant Beauty Stories
Tell us how migrant communities shaped beauty in Australia and New Zealand, 1950s onward.
4. Capture 21st-Century Womanhood
Share photographs and reflections from the last 25 years — your feelings, rituals, and relationship to beauty today.
5. Remember Products of the Past
Share memories or photos of favourite products from post-WWI to the 1960s.
6. Record Working Women’s Experiences
Add stories of women’s daily beauty rituals in the 1970s–80s.
Learn more about how you can contribute here.