Erin Parsons Launches Online Makeup Archive Featuring Rare Vintage Beauty Artifacts

Erin Parsons is making news by turning her sprawling collection of rare and vintage beauty products into a comprehensive online makeup museum.

Accessible at makeuparchive.org, The Makeup Archive showcases more than 1,500 historical cosmetics and beauty artifacts. Parsons, former global makeup artist for Maybelline New York and longtime artist for Gigi Hadid, built the collection over the past decade. She spent more than three years collaborating with archivist Holly McGraw to photograph and document each item for public viewing.

The digital museum features cosmetics spanning from the 17th century through the 2000s. Its centerpiece is a Max Factor lipstick once owned by Marilyn Monroe, which Parsons acquired at an online auction for more than $15,000.

Other notable items on display include archived MAC Cosmetics products spanning several decades—a brand that regularly leverages its legacy through initiatives such as its limited-edition Jean-Michel Basquiat collaboration—as well as 1920s-era cosmetics from Richard Hudnut and Revlon Couturine Lipstick Dolls from the 1960s.

"It's a feast for the eyes," Parsons said of the archive. The site also includes a dedicated library section allowing visitors to browse hundreds of vintage beauty books, complete with scanned excerpt pages from landmark titles such as Kevyn Aucoin's Making Faces, Denise Nicholas's Beauty Book, and Sally Pointer's The Artifice of Beauty.

To mark the launch, Parsons collaborated with photographer Vanessa Granda and set designer Matt Cullen on the nonprofit's first curated digital exhibition, featuring artfully styled arrangements of key archival pieces.

"I've been collecting for many years, and it became kind of a sick obsession—I had to turn it into something that could actually help people," said Parsons, who commands an audience of over six million social media followers across platforms with her deep-dive educational videos on cosmetics 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."

Operating as a nonprofit organization, The Makeup Archive stands as the largest public-facing digital repository of historical cosmetics in existence. While temporary physical installations have emerged in the past—such as a six-month pop-up launched in New York's Meatpacking District in 2020 by celebrity makeup artist Rachel Goodwin alongside Caitlin Collins and Doreen Bloch—a permanent brick-and-mortar makeup museum has yet to be established. Parsons' ultimate objective is to open a permanent physical institution in New York City.

"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," Parsons noted. Her long-term vision for a physical space encompasses educational programming, artist-led workshops, and community initiative programs.

"Makeup saved me. It's been my creative outlet and the beacon of hope in my life that made me successful," added Parsons, whose career began assisting Pat McGrath before she signed as Maybelline New York's global makeup artist in 2017. "Beauty is more than some frivolous thing; it's special, and it deserves a landmark museum."