Salute Restorative Skincare & Artistry is the studio I could not find for my own family.

When breast cancer claimed the life of my grandmother and then again, when cancer appeared in other forms, in the lives of family members and other women very close to me, I watched something happen that no medical chart prepares you for. The surgeries ended. The chemotherapy ended. The “you’re all clear” had arrived. And then those I cared deeply for, were left with bodies that no longer looked or felt like their own, and with no one trained to bring them back to themselves.

I am Maria Iacovino Jones, a New York State licensed esthetician with specialized training in oncology esthetics and 3D areola restoration paramedical tattooing. Salute is a Hudson Valley boutique studio I am opening in Orange County, New York to do exactly the work no one was trained to do for the women in my family, and that more than 1,900 women in our region still need every year.

In Westchester, Rockland, and Orange counties combined, over 1,900 women and men are diagnosed with breast cancer each year. After mastectomy and reconstruction, the final step that brings a persons body back to themselves, the realistic 3D areola restoration tattoo that recreates what surgery removed, is almost completely unavailable in the Hudson Valley. Today, Orange County patients drive 60 to 120 minutes to Manhattan, Albany, or Long Island for this service. They drive alone. They drive after surgery. They drive in a season of their life when no person should be driving anywhere alone.

I am opening Salute in Orange County, NY to shorten that drive to zero.

The opportunity is real and the gap is wide. There is no other studio in Orange County offering combined oncology esthetics and 3D areola restoration full time. Garnet Health, Crystal Run Healthcare, Montefiore St. Luke’s Cornwall, the surgeons who restore breasts in our region, currently refer their patients out of the Hudson Valley because the reconstructive artistry that completes the journey isn’t present here. Salute closes that gap.

The challenges are equally real. I am a solo practitioner at launch. Building trusted referral relationships with surgeons and oncology nurse navigators takes months of patient outreach. Insurance for paramedical tattoo work is specialized. And the people I most want to serve, those in active treatment, people on disability, people who have already given everything to survive, are exactly those who can least afford premium care.

Salute answers that with a hybrid model; Wellness clients, those who book a corrective facial every six weeks because they love their skin, fund the studio’s parallel mission of complimentary and reduced-cost restorative services for people in active cancer treatment and survivorship. Every facial sold helps fund a facial given. Our community contribution will be published annually, dollar for dollar, so that every client knows, their self-care is part of something larger than themself.

To restore skin.To restore form.To restore confidence.