Terry Castro, a New York-based jewellery designer whose knack for mixing the fantastical with the elegant propelled him from promoting on the sidewalks of New York to adorning celebrities like Rihanna and Steven Tyler, died on July 18 at his house in Istanbul. He was 50.
The trigger was a coronary heart assault, his son, Sir King Castro, mentioned.
Mr. Castro, who labored underneath the only title Castro, thought-about himself a “creator of goals.” He scoured vintage retailers and thrift shops for inspiration for his cheeky but luxurious items, which combined animal and human varieties and invoked African influences with medieval and galactic imagery. He produced solely about 35 items a 12 months, by hand, however he noticed his work featured on the covers of Vogue Latin America, Forbes and Hamptons magazines, and within the 2013 characteristic movie “Out of the Furnace.”
To Mr. Castro, jewellery was not only a trend accent. “Greater than being an impartial designer, he lived and operated as an artist,” mentioned Nghi Nguyen, a Brooklyn-based jewellery designer and shut pal. “His work could possibly be categorized as high-art jewellery. It’s wearable, museum-quality sculpture.”
It typically had costs to match. An antique bisque doll necklace — a part of his signature Dollies collection, crafted from tiny porcelain dolls — which options vibrating wings and a detachable masks, in addition to diamonds and different treasured gems, just lately offered for greater than $100,000, Sir King Castro mentioned in an interview.
Pals mentioned that as a largely self-taught Black designer, Mr. Castro prided himself on being an outsider on the earth of fantastic jewellery. “The jewellery business is prided on generational wealth and entry to supplies and sources,” mentioned Jules Kim, a pal and fellow jeweler. “People who find themselves not born into it must depend on no matter company they’ve. Castro lived by creating his personal traditions.”
Passionate and at occasions confrontational, Mr. Castro thought-about himself a insurgent throughout the business.
“I do what I would like; you don’t prefer it, don’t buy it,” he mentioned in a 2012 interview with The Black Nouveau, a method weblog. Recounting his scattered efforts to “go business,” he concluded that the revenue was not well worth the artistic worth paid.
“My actual accounts flipped on me,” he mentioned. “I used to be branded a traitor, and now I’m again to the darkish facet. For those who don’t have the power, keep the hell away from me.”
However that uncompromising angle as a substitute appeared to attract individuals in.
In 2020, De Beers, one of many world’s largest diamond producers, partnered with the Hollywood activist group RAD (Crimson Carpet Advocacy) to showcase Mr. Castro and 5 different Black designers in a marketing campaign known as #BlackisBrilliant. The marketing campaign outfitted celebrities with jewellery that includes ethically sourced diamonds from Botswana to put on at galas and award ceremonies.
“We approached Castro to take part as a result of, simply from taking a look at a number of of his locks and doll items, we knew he had a singular expertise,” Sally Morrison, De Beers Group’s director of public relations for pure diamonds, wrote in an e mail.
Final September, Sotheby’s featured Mr. Castro’s work in an exhibition known as “Brilliant & Black: A Jewelry Renaissance,” that includes 21 Black designers. At its opening, in New York, “individuals actually danced into the exhibition and cried,” mentioned Melanie Grant, a outstanding jewellery author who curated the present. And Mr. Castro, together with his gregarious nature and charismatic presence, was a pure star of the present.
“It’s nonetheless laborious for Black designers to get entry to top-level collectors,” Ms. Grant mentioned. “However I wish to suppose we made a distinction, and Castro was an vital a part of that.”
Terry Clifford Castro was born in Toledo, Ohio, on Jan. 26, 1972, to Mary Castro, who offered antiques and collectibles, and a father he by no means knew. In 1989 his mom married Paul Geller, a lawyer.
As a youth, Mr. Castro fell right into a life on the streets and did transient stints in jail, Sir King Castro mentioned. In 1999, he married Belinda Castro (her surname, coincidentally, was the identical as his). That very same 12 months the couple had a son, whom they bestowed with the grand-sounding title Sir King Raymundo Castro.
Mr. Castro grew to become thinking about jewellery restore after taking a weekend course, his former spouse, now Belinda Strode, mentioned in an interview. Finally he and his spouse opened a small jewellery retailer known as C & C Jewelers in Toledo, the place he carried out repairs and offered the work of different designers. Inside a number of years he started designing his personal jewellery, utilizing scrap steel from a junkyard, his former spouse mentioned.
The wedding and the store each proved to be short-lived. Within the early 2000s, after he and his spouse divorced, Mr. Castro moved to Chicago, the place he determined to show his lifelong curiosity in trend right into a profession, his half brother, Aaron Geller, mentioned in an interview.
He briefly ran his personal clothes line in his adopted metropolis, the place he lower a powerful determine within the techno golf equipment and trend boutiques. “He used to put on these spurs on the again of his boots,” recalled Ayana Haaruun, an in depth pal from these years. “He thought he was so fly. We used to name him Lenny Kravitz.”
In 2005 Mr. Castro moved to New York, the place he began his personal jewellery line, Castro NYC, which he offered on the sidewalks of SoHo. His work caught the eye of trend stylists and editors passing by way of the neighborhood, and earlier than lengthy he was increasing the enterprise and jetting off to trend weeks in Europe and Japan to point out his work.
As Mr. Castro rose within the business, he continued to problem assumptions relating to race. “I personally don’t suppose you could be Black, African, and your work doesn’t mirror some a part of Africa or Africanism, as a result of we dwell on this world the place we’ve got to consider so many different issues that different individuals don’t have to consider in a day,” he mentioned in an interview final 12 months with the style web site Magnus Oculus.
He additionally continued to problem himself, following his insatiable curiosity and peripatetic nature to maneuver to Istanbul in 2016.
Along with his son and his half brother, Mr. Castro is survived by his mom and stepfather.
Though his work celebrated life in all its shade and intricacy, demise was at all times a topic of fascination for Mr. Castro; skulls, each animal and human, had been a typical motif.
However his curiosity within the topic was not morbid. “With the cranium itself, it’s in you, it’s a part of you, it’s a part of life, but additionally a part of demise,” he mentioned within the Magnus Oculus interview. “With some Black individuals, they’ll see a cranium and they are going to be like, ‘Oh God, it’s voodoo and evil,’ and I can be like, ‘Effectively, which means you’re evil too, as a result of you’ve got a cranium inside your head. You’re strolling round with that factor.’”
