'Salvage María', reuses used clothing to create blankets and much more

For Janeesa María Joseph, the unexpected death of her 26-year-old brother, on Christmas Eve almost 8 years ago, inadvertently led her to create 'Salvage María', a company that creates blankets and many other products made from recycled clothing.

“When my brother died, I felt lonely and depressed. My mom and my sisters live in Texas. My husband told me that he understood what I was going through, but that we had a 2-year-old boy and I needed to be there for him."

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By this time, Janeesa Maria tells that she had brought into her house some of her late brother Joshua's clothes.

“Since I was a child, I always liked creating creative things and painting,” she recalls.

Faced with the pile of T-shirts his brother had left behind, he thought he had to find a way to fix them for his son.

“I knew he wouldn't remember my brother, so I started cutting them up and turning them into little T-shirts in different colors and sizes so that my son could wear them as he grew older, at ages 2 and 4.” .

From this effort to recycle and adapt his brother's t-shirts for his son, some friends began asking him if he could do the same job for their children with concert, high school or college t-shirts.

“This is how my business began and grew. At first, we reused clothes. At the same time I was posting what I was doing on Instagram and we were discovered by a person from the Nordstrom store who was doing an eco-friendly runway for Earth Day.”

Janeesa Maria says Nordstrom told her they'd love to feature the t-shirts and some of their other work. “By that time, I had started going to thrift stores and buying little jackets and trimming them with leather and trying to find old materials to make them look new.”

After being recognized by participating in the Nordstrom eco-runway with children's clothing, his brand began to grow and his work was placed in small boutiques in Los Angeles.

But one day, three years ago, when she was traveling to Mexico with her mother, María Rosario Miller, who is from the Isthmus of Tehuantepec area of ​​Oaxaca, she came across a blanket decorated with figures of swallows. “She was gorgeous and I was obsessed. I said what can I do with it and made it into a big cushion and put it on Instagram to show a friend who owns a pet store and he loved it."

In this way, he began to create cushions for pets using Mexican blankets. First for her friend who owns the pet store, but then they started looking for her from other stores.

“I had no plans to go into that kind of pet business. I was making cushions for my two children”.

While looking for ways to produce more cushions, her mother helped her contact a family of blanket weavers in Puebla, Mexico, and she has worked with them ever since.

“I have visited them to see how they make blankets. They buy large laundry baskets in specific colors. They put it in their machines and break it into fibers. With the fibers, the weavers make threads that they place on the loom to make the blankets. So they are completely recyclable because they are made from old clothes. It's amazing!".

Janeesa Maria says her company Salvage Maria has evolved from creating children's clothing to pet supplies and home décor. "We make beds and all kinds of accessories for pets as well as blankets and cushions for home decoration."

She says that her mother supports her in the search for textiles and in building relationships with the artisans of Mexico. “We have been able to help revive some of the traditional hand-weaving arts that in certain areas are slowly disappearing.”

And she says her mom has also helped her figure out how to import about 200 blankets, every other month.

He mentions that they rent a warehouse in Huntington Park where about 4 people work for his company.

Regarding the blankets that are made for her in Puebla, Mexico, she says that she chooses the colors and designs so that they are original and have variety.

“In my store, what they buy me the most are pet beds and blankets.”

During the pandemic, one of the products that sold the most were masks to protect against COVID.

“At a certain point we had to close. We did not know what to do. The stores were canceling our orders. It was very alarming. We had a lot of material sitting in the warehouse. I was thinking what can we do and when I saw the masks on the news, I said we must try. When we released them it was crazy because we were one of the first companies to do them and that helped us stay in business and even hire one more person”.

They made between 30,000 and 40,000 masks that they even donated to hospitals, non-profit organizations and police stations in Los Angeles and other states.

“Despite the circumstances, it was pretty amazing to see how a small group was able to do what we did during the pandemic.”

Recounting all that has happened since her brother's unexpected death, she says she never anticipated that his devastating departure would lead her to create a business that was born with the idea of ​​repurposing the T-shirts he left behind.

“Reusing things is a topic that is deeply rooted in us culturally. My mom always made us save the clothes we no longer wore to take to the children in the town where she is from in Mexico. In our house, nothing was wasted.”

She says that the empty cookie box was used to put things to sew and even the plastic cutlery was washed and put away.

“There is a reuse mentality in our culture and many can relate to what was going on in my house. Since I was a child, I always thought about how I could reuse things. It's something very ingrained in me."

If you want to know more about the work of Janeesa María, visit her website: https://salvagemaria.com

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