A different vision, a different culture.
We hope you can feel the difference when you walk into Velvaere Mae versus your typical salon. We don’t have a large front desk or receptionist team, we would love for you to enter and make yourself at home while you wait for your stylist to greet you.
Velvaere Mae is the sister salon to Meraki Hair Lounge, located in Minneapolis and Saint Paul.
Tiffany, our creator, opened her first location in 2020 amidst the pandemic. With so much excitement of opening a new business, this timing certainly made things more difficult, but not impossible. In June of 2020 Tiffany’s daughter Aeva Mae Jones took her life in the heaviness of the pandemic at the age of 15. Somehow, with much support from the community and her stylists, Tiffany was still able to persevere and open the first Meraki Hair Lounge in August that year, and 2 years later open her second location in Saint Paul.
Tiffany has wanted a way to honor her daughter, because without her presence in her life she would have never opened a salon or been able to help so many women successfully open their own businesses by renting a chair in her space, but also never felt ready. Grieving the loss of a child is something no parent should endure, and is an ongoing process. In opening Velvaere Mae, Tiffany has included Aeva’s middle name in the salon name and has added some of Aeva’s artwork to the decor of the salon. Nothing will ever honor Aeva perfectly but Tiffany hopes her salon offers a safe space for people to feel they belong and can be and express themselves authentically. Velvaere Mae is a step into honoring Aeva’s life through offering this safe space.
Through partnering with the Viking Lakes community we hope to explore more ways we can get involved in connecting with our community about mental health and the tools we need to normalize, like therapy, breath work and meditation.
Meet the Creator
Tiffany Wheelhouse
Tiffany has been in the health and beauty industry for 20 years. She has worked in salons in the twin cities area for most of her career as well as a Boulder Colorado. In 2016 She parted ways with her home salon to venture out on her own and found herself at a cute rental salon in Downtown Minneapolis. During this time she was called to try something she had stumbled upon: a fun side gig teaching group fitness at a local fitness studio in North East Minneapolis. The skill she developed through working with individuals who were working on goals with their overall health and wellness opened up a whole new outlook. Tiffany recognized her ability to lead others and change individual mindsets toward a more positive outlook and started to wonder how she could implement that into her career.
Bringing wellness into the work place is something she is continually striving for in the 3 salons she has opened since 2020. Tiffany strongly believes when a stylist is well balanced the entire salon experience can leave you feeling like you’re floating on air. We teach our stylists how to run their own businesses behind the chair giving them the flexibility and freedom to take care of themselves in that process. No more demands from the top on performance, our stylists decide their schedules, their boundaries and their preferred communication style with their clients.
We don’t operate like a typical salon, but we truly believe that’s how we can show up as our best selves to our clients.