Vicksburg’s first Merle Norman Cosmetic Studio was located on Washington Street in the 60s, according to the studio’s current owner, Sharon Rose Bishop.

And now it will be returning to its roots.

“I’m just taking her home,” Bishop said of her business’ relocation from South Frontage Road to 1221 Washington Street.

After her fiancée, Dan Robinson, purchased the building and five weeks of renovations, the cosmetic studio, which will share the space with the Belle Rose Salon and Spa, is set to open for business Aug. 1.

“They said Merle Norman doesn’t do well downtown,” Bishop said. “They want to be in a strip center or a mall, and I finally said, ‘I know my town. I know what downtown is. I am going to be in the center of more 37 different businesses, museums, restaurants, boutiques and art galleries. I’m in a three block walking distance of all of them, and I’m in the center of it.’”

A few hours later, Merle Norman’s headquarters gave Bishop permission to move into the old First Federal Savings building at the corner of Washington and Clay Street.

“All these businesses have established clientele. Merle has an established clientele, so we’re bringing all those people to the downtown area,” she said.

“That’s one of the points I made to the home office about moving down here was that they were going to help me. But I hope to help other businesses too.”

The previous owners did thousands of dollars worth of renovations to the building, Bishop said, including adding a fireplace and redoing the ceilings, making the work Robinson and his team of a few men needed to make the transition downtown minimal.

“We just had to personalize it for what we needed to do,” Bishop explained.

Those personalizations include adding shelving in the front portion of the space, which will house the cosmetic studio, adding chairs and shampoo stations in the salon section at the back of the building, adding sinks to certain rooms, adding flooring, replacing and adding lighting and breaking into the old bank vault through the ceiling because it had been locked.

“This place is built like Fort Knox,” Robinson said of the building, which he said was actually built in the 70s, though its older feel has been maintained throughout the renovations. “The bank vault door doesn’t lock, so it works just like a normal door now.”

Robinson said most of the renovation work on the building he has named the Belle Rose Building has been completed, leaving only small finishes, but all of Merle’s merchandise still needs to be moved along with the salon equipment and boutique merchandise.

“That’s thousands of lipsticks, mascaras, eye shadows and creams that need to be moved,” Bishop said.

The combination studio, salon and spa will feature four stylists, three estheticians, one nail technician, one message therapist and three makeup artists, which Bishop said sprung from all of the people she’s worked with during her 16 years of owning Vicksburg’s Merle Norman Cosmetic Studio.

Robinson said all of those services being in one place should make existing customers happy and add a few new customers as well.

“They all have their own people that will be coming here,” he said. “There’s a lot of synergy when you bring all of that together. Ladies can come to one place to get everything they need.”