Toukie Smith died on November 4 at 74, in a New York hospital, after living with multiple sclerosis. Her twins, Airyn and Julian, confirmed her death and described a long, courageous battle.
She was born Doris A. Smith in 1952 and worked under the name Toukie. She graduated from the Fashion Institute of Technology in 1972 and began modelling that year, walking for Givenchy and Thierry Mugler and appearing in Ebony, Vogue, Cosmopolitan and Seventeen. In 1978, six years out of school, Bloomingdale’s named her its Model of the Year.
Television came after that. She played Angie across three episodes of Miami Vice in 1987 and 1988, a woman assisting the singer played by Sheena Easton. The role most readers will remember is Eva Rawley, the artist who moves into the building on NBC’s 227 across the 1989 and 1990 seasons, opposite Marla Gibbs. She was in Talkin’ Dirty After Dark in 1991 and The Preacher’s Wife in 1996.
Her brother was the designer Willi Smith, who died in 1987 at 39 of complications from AIDS, and she talked about what he had made in her own words rather than leaving it to anybody else. “Willi always had fun with fashion,” she said. “He had a special energy and a love of keeping clothes from being too serious. He also totally designed for the masses.”
The two careers were not separate accidents. She came out of a fashion school in 1972 and spent the better part of two decades in rooms where what somebody made was the whole point, and then she went on television and played an artist.
Asked once how she kept going, she gave the short answer. “I’ve always had lots of energy,” she said.
Archives still file her under her birth name. A studio portrait taken in New York City on June 10, 1992, is catalogued to Doris A. Smith.
Her twins are her children with the actor Robert De Niro. After her death, Airyn De Niro wrote a tribute.
“I’ll always love you, Mom.”
