What's Meant For You Is Going To Happen: Lori Riviere's Career Journey

Although it may seem frightening to take risks, Lori Riviere proves that some of the best things in life come from doing what scares you. 

“Choosing to switch careers was not an easy decision,” she recalls. “But I knew it would make me happier.”

Riviere is an entrepreneur who created her firm, The Riviere Agency, which specializes in marketing, event planning, and public relations. She has worked with several high-profile brands such as Tiffany Brown, Primark, Walgreens, Sports Illustrated, and Kate Spade.

Fashion was something that Riviere was born into, as her father owned a clothing company, which exposed her to the industry at a young age. Growing up, Riviere attended many trade shows with her father. She would look around and see brands and items that stood out to her, such as Bongo jeans, and would go home to research everything she could. She would spend hours scanning the pages of Lucky magazine to learn more about these brands and found a love for fashion journalism in the process. This led to her wanting to pursue a career in the fashion industry.

“I wanted to major in magazine journalism,” Riviere says, “but my parents were like, ‘Hah, you need to earn a living.’” Raised by immigrant parents, she was encouraged to go into a field that guaranteed stability. She ended up going to the University of Florida majoring in advertising and later attending law school at the University of Miami.

After graduation, she was an extremely successful attorney, and many people wanted her on their side. However, Riviere was not satisfied with her profession; she recalls being “miserable” and was concerned that it was straining her relationships.

“I just hated my corporate job so much that I wanted a creative outlet for myself,” she says. “Everybody talks about self-care, but a form of self-care is also taking a little time to advance in something industrious that you’re interested in.”

To cope with her unhappiness, Riviere decided to start her own fashion and lifestyle blog called, Shortcuts to Fabulous. She continued this blog for several years posting content such as food recipes, travel photos, styling tips, fashion trends, and lookbooks. After keeping up with the blog for so long, Riviere began to build a following and gain attention from brands that wanted to work with her. About two years after consistently blogging, she started receiving free products and getting invited to fashion industry events.

At an event at Bliss Spa in Miami, she networked and formed connections with many influencers and industry figures. “I first kind of got my break when I was talking to the manager and he invited me to put together an event at the Bliss Spa,” she remembers. Considering Bliss Spa’s reputation and prestige, this was an amazing place to start her new career.

“I certainly didn’t expect that to happen,” she says, “I was just in the right place, at the right time, doing the right thing I guess.”

After planning the event, Riviere realized that event planning was something she could see herself doing full-time. To pursue this new goal, she sacrificed her higher-paying attorney job for a corporate lawyer position with fewer hours.

“When I got in that job, I said to myself, ‘Wow everyone here is kind of lazy,’” she laughs. “But I am good at being efficient with my time, so I found that I could manage my time to get ahead of the game and still have time for meetings relating to my passion.”  

Riviere took on a couple of clients and started to devote her breaks and downtime to work with them. Soon enough, Riviere was offered a position to manage public relations and events for a startup boutique company.

Only two days after she left corporate law, the CEO of her new job informed her that the funding for the company was cut and they were forced to shut down. To ensure she had an income, Riviere went back to work for a corporate entity as a lawyer for about four months.

Although she was unhappy to go back, she recalls that “it was kind of a good thing” because it forced her to hustle. “It made me realize that I couldn’t put all my eggs in one basket, I needed to diversify,” she says. “It was a great learning lesson to have early on in my career.”

After dealing with the loss of her dream job and going back to corporate law, Riviere proceeded with her passions. She took on multiple clients of her own, helping them to plan events and manage public relations. In 2008, she decided to establish her agency, creating a name for herself in the fashion industry.

With the help of her close friend, Nicole Doswell, she was able to get The Riviere Agency moving faster. Riviere started small working with a few emerging brands in Miami. Business soon got too busy, and with the help of Doswell, Riviere opened an office in New York.

“It was difficult in a million different ways. It affected me financially, emotionally, and physically. I worked crazy hours, I made big sacrifices,” she recalls. “I lived in this apartment in Brooklyn that was along the train tracks that would shake my room, and my roommate had a cat. I’m allergic to cats.” Although it was a challenge for her, Riviere did anything she had to so her dreams could become reality.

When reflecting on her journey, Riviere notes that working on Leanne Marshall’s last show during Paris Fashion Week was a moment that made her realize how far she has come.

“She just publicly announced that she will no longer be producing bridal collections and I knew that beforehand, so for me, it was very emotional because we knew it was a sendoff,” she says. “It was also really emotional for me to come full circle with my career and produce a show in Paris for someone who I admire so much and who believes in all the same things I do, which are sustainability, diversity, and inclusion.”

Riviere and Doswell pride themselves on running an agency that revolves around diversity. When speaking about casting models to walk in fashion shows, Riviere says. “If a client is not committed to having the makeup of their models represent the diversity of the world, we are not the right fit for them.”

The Riviere Agency is now larger than ever and continues to work alongside some of the most well-known brands in fashion. Riviere is a perfect example of a strong woman who followed her gut and let her passions shine through the expectations set on her. Despite the struggles that Lori Riviere had to endure to reach her goals, she says the key to her success was having faith in herself. 

“What’s meant for you is going to happen, and a lot of times we self-sabotage by not believing in ourselves. We are the biggest hindrances in our careers,” she says. “Your career is a journey. Not everything you want is going to come to fruition. But if you work hard over a lifetime, have a good attitude, and be kind to people, you will get where you want to go.”