The outstanding reputation of Caparros rests on a dedication to designing women’s dress shoes for life’s most important moments, featuring a wide range elegant high-heeled sandals with straps and halters expressly created for such events as weddings, proms, special evening events, and what the company itself describes as “life-defining occasions.” All of these handmade shoes display the most exquisite materials in beautifully gemlike colors, with designs that effortlessly make the transition from day to night.

Such smart, stylish design is what you would expect from the largest U.S. shoe brand to be owned and operated by a woman. Puerto Rico-born Anavel Caparros founded the company in 1988 after working on major shoe brands in Spain and Asia. Today, she continues to devote her company and her life, she says, to helping women to “realize their desire to look fabulous, alluring, and luxurious, without spending everything they have.”