Everything You Need To Know About This Affordable Peruvian Luxury Shoe Brand

A true luxury footwear fanatic can’t miss the name of Flor de Maria Rivera. Her polished pumps and glittering sandals have been worn by the likes of celebrities like Kylie Jenner, Ariel Winter and Normani.

Here is a snippet of her journey to one of the most famous shoe designer in the industry.

Riviera came to the USA, after migrating from Lima, at the young age of 14 with her family. She had attended the University of San Diego to study journalism and Spanish. Her first career choice was to become a Sports producer. She followed her career choice for seven years as an anchor and reporter in San Francisco for major Spanish-language networks like Telemundo and Univision.

As a person who didn’t know English when she entered the U.S, she faced a hard time, trying to fit in. This helped her mould into the person she is today and prepared her for her lifetime.

It was her father’s death to cancer that she quit her reporting job to become a Major League Soccer publicist in the Bay area, a job that involved styling athletes for on-screen appearances.

Over the years, her clientele made her realise she had a great eye for fashion and as a result, she opened her own bilingual blog called Flor de Maria Fashion in 2010. She would write on topics such as styling, beauty and travel. She soon quit her role as a PR and moved to New York to expand her contacts in the fashion industry. This is the time where she did collaborations with publications like Cosmopolitan for Latinas and People en Espanol.

All this while, Riviera had a wish to create her own shoe brand. But she needed to be ready for it and hence her blog was the stepping stone to her dream.

In her blog, she had a section called  “Shoe of the Week.” Here, she would write about her favourite shoe style and brands. This started to gain a lot of attention which made her realise this was her moment and passion.

She started being called to various TV shows and magazine interviews to talk about shoes. Her keen interest in shoes made her purchase 500 pairs of shoes and spent thousands of dollars on designer heels but yet thought something was missing.

She soon realised that what she was looking at was high-quality, comfortable and mainly affordable heels. She realised that there was a market for this.

Hence, she put a pause on her blog and started learning the art of shoemaking. She attended Arsutoria, a top shoe school in Italy and also completed business entrepreneurship at Stanford University.

She effectively made use of social media to understand the feedback of what people liked and wanted. After a lot of research, she started her own eponymous brand in 2019. Owing to her roots, she launched her first collection with the theme of Peruvian culture. Her self-titled Flor sandal, offered in four rich hues with glittering crystals on the straps, pays tribute to the Tumi — a small metal object often hung inside Peruvian homes to symbolize good luck.

Intricately designed, her silhouettes are inspired by  the colourful Andes mountains and Peru’s southern Nazca lines, a group of pre-Columbian geoglyphs etched into the sands of the Nazca desert

Besides her roots, the female figures in her life too inspired her. Rivera credits her mother, who apparently was never seen leaving the house without heels on, for instilling the designer with a love of shoes. She also introduced a line, named after her 94-year old grandmother, Isabel.

Like the women in her family who’ve helped shaped her journey, Rivera also refers to her shoppers as “queens.” And every pair of shoe is titled with a female name, embodying the empowering ethos that’s effervescent throughout her line. She wants her customers to take the quote by Marilyn Monroe- “Give a girl the right shoes, and she can conquer the world.” quite literally.

“I’ve worn thousands of pairs of shoes, and know firsthand that while a 5-inch heel is alluring, it can be painful to walk in,” she said. “I want women to be able to wear my shoes at least eight hours a day, in a silhouette that still feels sexy.”

Not only comfortable, her shoes are also versatile. Each pair comes with a set of interchangeable straps of different lengths and materials, such as leather, suede or PVC, to switch up the look.

She sources her materials from  Italy and around the world, Rivera is able to keep her prices lower following a direct to consumer model. They start at $245 and top out at just under $400.

Her self-funded e-commerce label boasts of 90& customer retention rate. Just after four months of her launch, the business faced a hit when the world was struck with the Covid pandemic. But she regained and the sales in the following five months have been stronger than ever.

The pump-sandal hybrid called the Kelly, which launched in early September as part of the designer’s third collection, sold out in two days.

Rivera’s label currently includes 11 styles, from strappy sandals and pumps to mules and a pair of knee-high boots.

Today, Rivera continues to appear in fashion and beauty segments for various TV networks while dropping new silhouettes, designing for upcoming seasons. She yet uses the power of social media to reach out to her customers. Her current Instagram following is 48,000. In addition to opening pop-up shops and brick-and-mortar stores down the line, Rivera hopes to offer scholarships to other burgeoning female designers, especially those from minority backgrounds.

“At the end of the day, my motto is all about helping other women, just like the women in my life supported me. As an immigrant in this country, I feel I have a duty to uplift my culture and those who come behind me.”