Melana did not begin as a brand.
It began as a remembering — that adornment and ritual once helped people move through change with clarity and care.
The path that followed was not linear. It unfolded through lineage, science, travel, and lived experience, returning as modern relicwear™ and transformative tools shaped for this time.
Science Meets Sensitivity
Founder
Melana is founded by Melissa Farrugia — ecological biologist, storyteller, and spirit-smith.
With over two decades shaping global and Australian brands, alongside a lifelong attunement to nature, symbol, and subtle rhythm, her work bridges analysis and intuition — grounding insight in observation, pattern, and planetary intelligence.
Her gift lies in translation: turning complexity into clarity, boring into beautiful and symbolism into usable form.
Memory Made Material
Lineage
Melissa’s ancestry spans Maltese temple builders, North African healer-guardians, Irish bardic traditions, and Nordic wisdom cultures — lineages where craft, story, and ritual carried knowledge forward.
These influences shape how Melana works with memory, material, and meaning — not as mythology, but as lived intelligence.
Rhythm Over Theory
Science
Tertiary training in Environmental biology and Earth-cycle systems grounded intuition in tides, seasons, and ecological rhythm.
From this understanding, the Anima Mundi ~ Wheel of Life™ initiated as a precise, cyclical framework — embodied, observable, and grounded in natural systems.
Making as Pilgrimage
Initiation
Journeys through sacred sites and ateliers across Europe, South America, and Asia revealed creation as pilgrimage rather than production — a conversation between place, hand, and spirit.
This way of making shaped Melana’s devotion to slow craft, presence, and respect for material.
The Work Turns Forward
Legacy
With the birth of Ana-Rose, the work shifted from remembrance to transmission.
The Anima Mundi ~ Wheel of Life™ was received as a living compass — becoming the framework through which Melana now guides others.
Not as belief. But as orientation.
One Line, Many Lives
Becoming
Mel · Ana · One
The Wheel offers the compass.
The relic carries the memory.
The practice gives it life.
Why Melana
"Because adornment awakens alchemy.
Because jewels journey with us as we remember and become.
Because tools teach transformation.
And because every soul needs an anchoring reminder of its true north"
~ Mel ✦