My paper explores the work of women and women’s organizations in salvaging traditional crafts in the context of industrialization, expanding capitalist economy, and French colonialism in early-20th century Lebanon. Particularly, it examines how patrons of arts and crafts engaged in projects of discovery, documentation, and design in the process of constructing a Lebanese heritage in the 1930s. Their activities included travels across Lebanon, Palestine, and Syria to collect and document both historical and contemporary costumes; visualizations of a Lebanese heritage inspired by the latest Western-led archaeological excavations and museum collections; and the setting up of venues to exhibit ancient garments and sell newly designed ones. In other words, I attempt to historicize Lebanese heritage by highlighting the inclusion of some Western sources, regional repertoires, and modern methods that women’s associations used in their effort to bridge the passing of a “traditional” society with the ushering in of “modernity.” Mostly known as a leading Arab feminist and a Lebanese nationalist, Evelyne Tueni Bustros (1878-1971), scioness of the Greek orthodox aristocracy in Beirut, played a central role in these cultural and material enterprises nourishing wider nation-building efforts. Using the archival collection of Bustros at the American University of Beirut, along with the Arabic, French, and English periodicals of the time, ephemera and official documents, I shed light on this hitherto little-known aspect of Bustros’s work and its significance for the reconstruction of the material history of modern Lebanon. While the intertwining of Bustros’s biography and the making of Lebanese heritage informs us of the urban notables’ role in the nation-building process under French mandate authorities, it also reveals the overlapping absences of women’s work and material culture in the post-colonial national archives. Ultimately, this research hopes to contribute to the understanding of nation-building from the perspective of women’s history and the history of crafts in colonial contexts, with particular attention to the construction of heritage in discursive and material terms.