Meet Mija Cultura | Latina Streetwear Brand

We had the good fortune of connecting with Mija Cultura and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Mija, what was your thought process behind starting your own business?
We always knew we wanted a business but didn’t know exactly what. For a year it was like that, the “not knowing what you want to do”, and we felt like we had a good sense of fashion sense & we were both latinas. So we thought, why not put together what Latinx’s would want to wear! It was a mixture of that with a little help from our friends pushing us to start that actually motivated us even more.

Alright, so for those in our community who might not be familiar with your business, can you tell us more?
We are two Latina women who own an online Latinx store selling some pretty awesome merch. What sets us apart from other brands is that we are all about “uplifting” other brands, not competing. We get excited when we do photo shoots near elote stands, because we love elotes a little too much. Three years ago, we started our company and if it wasn’t for our friends pushing us to start our business and get on our feet, we wouldn’t be where we are today. Of course, doing our own photo shoots, finding our own models, finding different locations, shipping orders, etc. gets a little hard, but when you keep pushing, that’s when sales comes in. That’s what keeps us going! Getting to where we are today was hard, but not hard enough to where we’re complaining. The lesson’s we’ve learned along the way is: 1. stop giving out discounts, people should be willing to support your business! 2. Don’t procrastinate, even though we still procrastinate. 3. Don’t be late to photo shoots, we were late to a photo shoot and we had a model waiting in a coffee shop for almost an hour for us. (Sorry Alfonso!) … that’s all we can think about at this time. We want the world to know that Mija Cultura is pretty much the coolest Streetwear brand of all time. Of. All. Time. This is something that your parents would be proud of you for wearing. We want people to know we work really hard and we have fun doing it. We try to be funny but we aren’t really that funny. And we love meeting people too, and hopefully in 4 years when we have our storefront we want people to remember where we started. Our brand is our brand and we love our brand.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
My mama’s house. My mima’s house. Just kidding, I mean that would be cool too but if we’re talking about pre-covid then we’d suggest: satellite bar for live music & drinks, barbarella’s “saves the Tuesday” emo nights and their 90’s nights, the dive for “Wepa” latin nights, Tacos bomberos because they have good tacos. Pretty much anywhere tacos bomberos is posted up at is where we’d be. Uhh, there’s poison girl which is a cool bar. Lola’s depot which is a cool dive bar. Lei low’s which is the cutest tiki bar ever in the world. I’m not kidding, their drinks are so cute. Tampico has the best elote and the most fire raspa’s in the world. A fun place to also hang out and eat at like 3 am was Mai’s Vietnamese restaurant. Some days we’d leave the clubs at 2 am and show up at Mai’s at 3 am ready to eat some bomb Pho. But that’s when we were wilin’ out. We hope you at least try 3 of these places in one day. You won’t regret it.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
We’d love to shoutout @4thlrgst, our graphic designer, thanks for always helping out and bringing our designs to life! We love you! Shout out camera cult, they’re an annoying band from Houston, Texas so don’t listen to their music.

Website: mijacultura.com
Instagram: Instagram.com/mijaculture
Twitter: Twitter.com/mijaculture
Facebook: Facebook.com/mijaculture
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkYTdxhvNVizdZz7DbuhCwQ

Image Credits
JoAnn Alvarez