Paulina Anda wants her “Urban Romanticism” shoe line to leave a mark “of fashion talent by Ecuadorians” at Miami Beach’s International Fashion Week, which begins on Tuesday.

“On the catwalk, I want everyone to know that in Ecuador we make fashion, that we have a lot of talent,” said the designer in an interview with Efe in Miami.

Anda will present her Makiatto line for the second time at Fashion Week.

For the Ecuadorian, the event is “a dream (I’ve had) all my life” as well as being an opportunity to display her creations and the talent that did not come to her by chance, given that she grew up in a shoe manufacturing family.

“My aunts made shoes, ... and I was always in contact with them and with the shoes,” recalled the woman who three years ago decided to enter the fashion industry professionally.

She left her job as a securities broker to begin a journey into shoe design because, she said, “in my country there did not exist a different proposal, regarding footwear.”

With a degree in footwear design and marketing from Milan, she explained that her strategy was to attack a market niche for women who needed different and comfortable shoes in her country and who were not satisfied with what there was.

Anda shared that she had achieved much more than she had expected and had made her career into a family business where her parents administer a production operation that has about 30 employees.