World’s biggest Mecca store to open in Melbourne: Check out the services that will be offered

Melbourne-founded cosmetic giant Mecca will open its flagship 4000-square-metre, three-storey ‘pink palace’ department store in Bourke St Mall next month, with more than 80 services on offer.

The world’s biggest Mecca store will open in Melbourne on August 8. Picture: Hugh Davies

The world’s biggest beauty store is set to open in the Bourke St Mall next month.

And when we say world’s biggest, Mecca means it, with the Melbourne-founded cosmetic giant to finally reveal its flagship 4000-square-metre, three-storey department store, dedicated to all things beauty.

The heritage site at 299 Bourke St will become a pink palace for all things make-up, cosmetics, fragrances, hair and skincare and must-see tourist destination for all the beauty fanatics here and around the world.

A mecca to Mecca, which will open on Friday, August 8 — with no less than 80 services on offer.

Mecca founder and co-chief executive Jo Horgan has spoken of her dream of creating the world’s most beloved beauty destination.

Jo Horgan of Mecca Cosmetica. Picture: Robbie Fimmano

The new Mecca Bourke St store will be a pink palace. Picture: Hugh Davies

“We want to put the joy back into shopping and see our Melbourne flagship as an opportunity for us to continue to innovate, try new things and really raise the bar, again and again,” Horgan said following its announcement.

After first starting out in 1997 from a South Yarra store on Toorak Rd, using the sale of her house to establish the business, Horgan’s success story is one for the ages.

Serving more than 4.5 million customers in the past year, it now has 110 stores across Australia and New Zealand, employing more than 7,000 people.

The cult favourite $1 billion plus empire has become Australia’s largest prestige beauty retailer.

But Mecca Bourke St, which will help create hundreds of jobs for young Victorians and others, is by far the most ambitious project to date

Proclaimed as “the beating heart of beauty,” think high-end luxury.

One of Horgan’s goals was to have her loyal customers, from brides-to-be to those heading to an event or lunch, able to visit the Mecca Atelier that does make-up, hair and nails all at the same time — in-and-out in an hour.

The multi-levelled department store will also feature an apothecary offering “a holistic wellness destination rooted in mind-body rituals”; a “perfumera” dedicated to the world’s most beloved fragrance brands; an aesthetic clinic offering full dermal treatments including lasers and injectables, a cafe and “gift boxing” area dedicated to its 200 plus beauty brands here and around the world, from UK make-up queen Charlotte Tilbury, to Zoe Foster-Blake’s Go-To skincare.

Horgan wants customers, from brides-to-be to those heading to an event or lunch, to be able to have make-up, hair and nails all done at the same time. Picture: Aaron Franci

Most recently the premises of Australian retailer David Jones’s menswear department, the site has been restored to its interwar glory. Mexican-inspired art deco details and arched windows are set against Le Bon Marché-style scissor escalators.

The heritage 150-year-old site has an incredible history. From 1883 to 1929 it housed Edward William Cole’s iconic Cole’s Book Arcade – Melbourne’s literary funhouse, a magnificent three-storey bookshop, which was one of the city’s greatest attractions and, at one time, the largest bookstore in the world with over two million volumes.

It was then transformed into the architecturally significant building it is today by G.J. Coles in 1930 and was the flagship Coles variety store until 1986.

Horgan said it was the fondness for the building by generations of Melburnians and the prominence beyond this, both nationally and internationally, that were deciding factors in Mecca taking on the Bourke Street lease.