Founder Story

The Jet-Lagged Epiphany: How Cloudwalkers Was Born

Maya Rivera never meant to start an apparel company.

She was an aerospace materials engineer—one of those people who could recite tensile-strength specs the way most of us quote movie lines. For eight years she bounced between Seattle, Toulouse, and Tokyo, helping airlines shave ounces off cabin interiors so planes could burn less fuel. It was glamorous in theory, exhausting in practice: fifteen-hour flights, six-hour layovers, and meetings that began while her body still thought it was 3 a.m.

On one particularly brutal run — LAX to Singapore — Maya boarded wearing her usual “comfort” uniform: stretchy black pants that promised breathability. Somewhere over the Pacific she woke up sweaty, the fabric plastered to her skin. She shuffled to the galley, half-asleep, and joked to a flight attendant, “If I can put satellites in orbit, why can’t anyone make pants that let my legs breathe up here?”

The attendant laughed. Maya didn’t.

She spent the rest of the flight sketching ideas on a cocktail napkin: micro-vent channels, four-way flex points, weight-balanced seams that wouldn’t sag. By touchdown she had the rough blueprint for what she would later call AirFlow™ knit.

Back in her tiny apartment, jet-lagged and wired, Maya hacked a thrift-store sewing machine. She cannibalized performance fabrics from running shorts, yoga leggings, and even a decommissioned airplane seat cover (the breathable part, not the leather). After fifteen prototypes and countless late-night “stretch tests” up and down her hallway, she put on a pair that felt… different. Cool. Weightless yet structured. When she walked outside, an actual breeze slipped through the fabric and her tired legs felt — her words — “awake.”

Friends wanted pairs. Strangers in coffee lines asked where she’d bought them. Maya started mailing tester pants in recycled aviation-parts boxes. People sent back rave reviews — often with sweaty old joggers included, tagged “R.I.P.”

In 18 months she left aerospace, raised a tiny friends-and-family round, and opened a micro-factory in Portland staffed by ex-garment workers who shared her obsession with breathable design. She called the pants Cloudwalkers because, she said, “They feel like what I always hoped flying would be.”

Today Maya still travels, but the ritual is different. She boards in her own creation, kicks off her shoes, and actually looks forward to the long haul. Every time the cabin lights dim, she remembers that cocktail-napkin moment way above the Pacific, when the idea for Cloudwalkers first floated into her jet-lagged brain — and changed how thousands of women now move through their day.