Erin Parsons is turning her sprawling collection of rare and vintage beauty products into an online makeup museum.
Called The Makeup Archive and accessible via makeuparchive.org, the museum site showcases more than 1,500 products, which Parsons — formerly Gigi Hadid’s makeup artist — accrued in the last decade and has been working for more than three years alongside archivist Holly McGraw to photograph and detail for the public’s viewing.
The archive features beauty products originating from the 17th century through the 2000s, with the most valuable item being a Max Factor lipstick belonging to Marilyn Monroe that Parsons secured in an online auction for more than $15,000.
A Max Factor Hollywood Lipstick belonging to Marilyn Monroe.
Holly McGraw
Other products on display include discontinued MAC Cosmetics products through the decades; 1920s-era Richard Hudnut; Revlon Couturine Lipstick Dolls from the 1960s, and more.
“It’s a feast for the eyes,” Parsons said of the archive, which also includes a library section allowing viewers to browse hundreds of beauty books, of which a few pages per publication have been scanned and posted, including Kevyn Aucoin’s “Making Faces”; the Denise Nicholas “Beauty Book”; “The Artifice of Beauty” by Sally Pointer, and more.
Parsons with a Schuco Red Monkey Compact from the 1920s.
Luisa Opaleski
Separately, Parsons enlisted photographer Vanessa Granda and set designer Matt Cullen to introduce the MUA’s first of many “exhibitions,” where select products from the archive have been artfully styled and shot together.
Vintage makeup from Dior, Maybelline and more for the archive’s first special exhibition.
Vanessa Granda
“I’ve been collecting for many years, and it became kind of a sick obsession, and I had to turn this sick obsession into something that could actually help people,” said Parsons, who has more than 6 million social media followers across platforms, and is known for her videos detailing lesser-known aspects of makeup history.
“This information that you would maybe get before from a video that I posted, I’m putting it out there at people’s disposal. For consumers; makeup artists; beauty lovers — it could be a resource for brands, even.”
The MUA is a nonprofit organization, and it offers the largest public-facing archive of beauty products in existence.
It follows other makeup museum efforts, like the one celebrity makeup artist Rachel Goodwin, alongside Caitlin Collins and Doreen Bloch, opened in New York in 2020 on Gansevoort Street for six months. However there isn’t a permanent, physical makeup museum, and it is Parsons’ ultimate goal to introduce one in New York.
The Denise Nicholas “Beauty Book,” one of hundreds of books in the MUA library.
Courtesy of Erin Parsons
“We’ve got the Met, the MoMa, the Guggenheim, the Whitney — we need the MUA. Beauty is a huge industry, and we don’t have a museum that’s dedicated to it and its history,” she said, adding that her vision for an eventual physical space includes in-person, artist-led workshops and give-back programs for those in the beauty community and beyond.
“Makeup saved me. It’s been my creative outlet and the beacon of hope in my life that made me successful,” said Parsons, whose early artistry career saw her assisting Pat McGrath and, years later, signing with Maybelline New York in 2017 as the brand’s global makeup artist. “Beauty is more than some frivolous thing; it’s special, and [it deserves] a landmark museum.”
