Footwork: Pinky Tobiano and Olivia Limpe-Aw On Changing Legacies

These two women share the milestones and values that shaped their careers, and they express their personal style with VIVAIA’s Fall-Winter 2026 collection

Despite their different career paths, chemist-entrepreneur Pinky Tobiano and Destileria Limtuaco CEO Olivia Limpe-Aw share a profound appreciation for their families. In a conversation with Vogue Philippines, the two express that it was never about carrying a legacy, but an opportunity to uplift the communities they created along the way.

In partnership with footwear brand VIVAIA, this two-part collaboration celebrates five women who lead in their respective industries. From the challenges that shaped them to the milestones that gave their work a greater purpose, these women also share how VIVAIA’s RE:WORK campaign reshaped their standards for self-expression throughout their careers.

Pinky Tobiano

“Someday the medicines I’ll be selling are the medicines I formulated,” says Tobiano. As early as five years old, Tobiano was already helping feed and raise livestock in her parents’ poultry-supply business. She shares how this early exposure led her to pursue chemistry as a career with a focus on creating feed that enhances their health.

From using her dowry to lay the foundations for Progressive Laboratories to forging future partnerships while riding business class, growth remained a guiding principle as she further developed her business acumen and ability to adapt to her industry. “I was only 26 when I started,” Tobiano explains. “But I guess along the way, I found mentors who guided me, and they allowed me to fall sometimes to realize that when I stood up, I learned to be stronger and learn from those mistakes.”

Tobiano’s work, however, has evolved beyond the lab. More than just showcasing her scientific passions on social media, Tobiano also contributes to coastal cleanup efforts in Laguna Lake and aids disadvantaged children and elders through the Pinky Cares Foundation. While she rarely wears a lab coat these days, Tobiano says that her style is an equal expression of professionalism and self-expression, especially when it comes to her footwear collection.

“Comfort is really important, especially being a chemist. I walk around the plant, and I also have a very active lifestyle. So for me, VIVAIA is classic in design but also very comfortable, meaning it allows me to express myself without sacrificing the quality of life,” she explains. For the shoot, Tobiano styled VIVAIA’s Addison heel, which features a knitted slingback design, a pointed toe, and “a cushion that
I don’t find it in other shoes,” she notes.

Despite her age, Tobiano finds herself more driven than she was before. She says, “At my age, would you even think I’ll be an influencer? I’m also a liveseller now, creating more jobs through e-commerce, and lastly, I’m an actress.” To her, taking on these challenges is her way of finding new opportunities to uplift others, one of the few facets that she hopes others would embody on their own.

“Then they have to have the passion, because it all starts with passion, the desire. If you have the desire, definitely you will execute. So I think those are my three important ingredients for the next generation to be able to succeed far better than what I achieved,” says Tobiano.

Olivia Limpe-Aw

Whether it was helping her father do administrative tasks at a young age, or watching the company’s distillers create the spirits she’d one day recontextualize, Limpe-Aw had basically spent much of her childhood inside Distileria Limtuaco. As the fifth-generation CEO in her family’s lineage, taking on the mantle wasn’t necessarily driven by obligation; rather, it was in the belief that the brand would find a deeper purpose through the people who made its lasting success possible.

Over time, Limpe-Aw expressed how her initial passions for beauty would later be what differentiated her approach to the company’s 170-year heritage. “I wasn’t necessarily working against it, but putting them together, evolving, and applying my interests into the brand’s identity,” she notes.

Limpe-Aw also underscores the many mentors that have shaped not only her perspective in carrying the brand forward, but also in how she presents herself as a leader through style. “My father was an artist, and that made him want to be surrounded by similarly beautiful things: the interiors of the house, the paintings he made, and when we were in our teens, he started teaching us how to dress well, so he would bring us to buy clothes, and even our shoes,” Limpe-Aw details.

While the foundations of her personal style were initially based on a sense of tiis-ganda, the responsibilities of her work would lead her to reconsider a more comfortable approach after being gifted a pair of Vivaia shoes over the Holidays. “If you have beautiful shoes but it’s like killing your feet, it will show, and it will be difficult for you to do what you have set out to do. Brands like VIVAIA allow us to do our jobs and enable us to work comfortably while still looking professional,” she says.

For the shoot, Limpe-Aw dressed the Scarlett heels’ knit silhouette with a classic double-breasted suit ensemble to match her professional aesthetic. For her, the brand’s use of recycled plastic bottles reflected deeply in her own pursuits of using sustainably sourced ingredients for her crafted spirits, a quality that now defines her legacy in the company’s history.

“It’s not like buying your ingredients from the local market because livelihoods are also affected by the way we do business. There’s so much the industry can do to help uplift their lives, and I want to expand on that even more. More than just coming up with new products, it’s really heartwarming and encouraging to see how we can help positively impact the lives of our farmers,” Limpe-Aw says.

Resonating with the Tobiano and Limpe-Aw’s professional journeys, VIVAIA Fall-Winter 2026 collection was said to take inspiration from those who lead their careers with purpose. According to creative director Alan Buanne, “Women like these influence the way I design because they constantly make me question who I’m designing for, not simply what she wears, but who she is, what she does, and what she values.”

Whether worn to the gym or for casual meetings along the city, actresses Katie Holmes, Anne Hathaway, and Bella Hadid were also recently spotted wearing their own pieces of VIVAIA footwear, showcasing how its versatile designs resonate with those who move through their everyday lives in style.

For Buanne, whose design language now defines the collection’s RE:WORK campaign, each piece was described as a balance of his evolving approach to self-expression and quiet confidence expressed through comfort and sustainability. “It has influenced my perspective on storytelling because I’ve realized that not every value needs to be announced. For me, that is perhaps the deeper story behind RE:WORK: we genuinely care about improving how we make things, whether or not we are talking about it,” Buanne says.

Visit VIVAIA Philippines’ official stores in Trinoma, Glorietta 4, Power Plant Mall, SM Megamall, SM Mall of Asia, Festival Mall, and Ayala Center Cebu (opening on October 13) to view the RE:WORK collection. Visit VIVAIA on Facebook and Instagram to learn more.