Remembering Toukie Smith From the Runway to 227
The report attributes confirmation to Smith’s twins, Airyn and Julian, who said she died November 4 at a New York hospital. In their statement, cited as appearing in The Hollywood Reporter, they remembered their mother as “a force of nature.” Born Doris Smith in Philadelphia, she built a distinctive fashion career, working with designers including Hubert de Givenchy, Thierry Mugler and Issey Miyake. Bloomingdale’s named her Model of the Year in 1978.
Smith later brought her presence to television, appearing in Miami Vice before playing Eva Rawley on 227. Her film credits included I Like It Like That and The Preacher’s Wife. She and De Niro welcomed their twins through a surrogate in October 1995, during a relationship that ended the following year. Yet she valued a life beyond public attention. As she told the Los Angeles Times in 1990: “What’s great about a private life is it’s private.”
Smith's fashion career put her in the work of designers who approached clothes in markedly different ways. Givenchy was associated with polished couture, while Mugler was known for sharply constructed, theatrical silhouettes. Issey Miyake explored how fabric could move and take shape around the body. A model working in those settings had to communicate the particular idea behind each garment. The range of those names gives some sense of the adaptability that made Smith's work stand out.
The recognition from Bloomingdale's in 1978 came years before her best-known television role. It marked a point in a career that had already taken her from Philadelphia into fashion. Fashion images are often remembered for the clothes or the designer, but a model's posture and expression help decide how the clothes are seen. The accounts of Smith's work remember a presence that could hold attention in its own right.
Television introduced her to another audience. Her appearance on Miami Vice preceded her role as Eva Rawley on 227, an ensemble comedy set around the residents of a Washington apartment building. That was a different setting from the runway. A character had to become familiar over repeated episodes, and the exchanges among neighbors gave the cast room to develop their own rhythms. Viewers who met Smith through that role knew her through dialogue and comic timing.
Her later film credits included I Like It Like That and The Preacher's Wife, adding to work that crossed between fashion, television and film. Those credits also explain why different people remember her from different points in her career. Someone who followed designer collections may recall a model, while someone who watched 227 may think first of Eva Rawley. Both were parts of the public life her children remembered after her death.
The relationship with Robert De Niro often appears in summaries of her life because they shared two children. Smith spoke publicly about valuing privacy, and her own work had already given her a career independent of that attention. In announcing her death, Airyn and Julian remembered their mother alongside the woman whose work other people had followed for years. The fashion and screen roles record what she did in public. Their statement offered a glimpse of the person they knew in their family.