Ashley Macpherson has spent her whole life traveling between Michigan and Canada. With a family lake house near Grand Bend, Ontario, the former Dearborn resident has traversed the Blue Water Bridge so many times she could do it with her eyes closed — not that we’d recommend it.
Ashley, like many a Michigander with connections to Canada, has made the trip so many times that she’s grown a great affinity for the Blue Water Area. So much so, in fact, that Ashley and her young family recently packed up and moved from metro Detroit to St. Clair, purchasing a home and putting their roots down in November 2019.
“I just love the community here. It’s ideal for our two small kids and my husband got a job teaching in Marine City,” Ashley says.
“I love the water. I grew up on the water and spent my whole life going to the family home in Canada. Going through Port Huron and over the bridge, or taking day trips to Lexington — you can feel the sense of community here.”
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Now the Macphersons are becoming even more embedded in the area: Ashley recently celebrated the grand opening of The Shampagne Room, a blow dry and beauty bar that opened in the St. Clair Riverview Plaza this January.
Ashley has been providing custom hair and makeup services since she was a teenager. But this is the first brick-and-mortar business for the entrepreneur.
“The way I am, it was almost inevitable. But it was all about finding the right location first,” she says.
That right location is at the Riverview Plaza in a storefront vacated by War Water Brewery after their relocating elsewhere in the plaza. Ashley says that she didn’t find the storefront, it found her.
The Shampagne Room provides blow dry and makeup services. The “menu” offers services named after drinks; the Rosé, for example, offers big hair with volume and gloss.
The Shampagne Room name itself is a pun, combining shampoo and champagne. Clients are offered a snack and a drink on each visit.
“I’ve always been into event styling. I loved doing hair for people going to the auto show previews back in Detroit,” Ashley says. “This is a space for people to come to when they have events or even just to come in once a week.”
Ashley also offers the shop for private rentals, ideal for a group of women to get together before a night on the town.
The Shampagne Room is dedicated to Ashley’s grandmother Geraldine Wszola, who sadly passed away in December 2020.
The two had a close bond; Ashley would do her grandmother’s hair every Friday since she was 15 years old. Unfortunately, her grandfather also recently passed.
“Opening has given us something to do and something to focus on, which has helped. And I put my grandma’s high school graduation photo hanging up in the studio. People are always asking about it,” Ashley says.
“She got to see me getting the shop ready to open, which I’m really glad about. And now it means so much more.”
The Shampagne Room is located in the Riverview Plaza in St. Clair.
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