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Portrait of a Designer
By Paddy Kamen
As a child, Michael Castillo was always
trying to figure out how things worked.
He certainly got it right with eyewear
design!
THE persistent and inquisitive child,
Michael Castillo took things apart
and put them back together—
sometimes! “I didn’t always get all
A the parts to fit back together, but I
loved the challenge and learning is sometimes
ACCIDENTAL a messy business,” he says. “As I matured,
I became fascinated with building scale
models of spaceships, planes and boats.” His
natural curiosity was nurtured by his father
and uncles—aviation engineers who had a
DESIGNER: knack for mentoring young minds. Castillo
remembers, “They seemed to know how
everything worked and fueled my passion for
MICHAEL Born in East Los Angeles to a family of five kids,
the how and the why of things.”.
by age 12 Castillo was obsessed with drawing:
superheroes, cars, planes—you name it. Did he
aspire to becoming an engineer or designer? Not
CASTILLO really, nor did he gravitate to art school as one
might imagine. Castillo was considering careers
in the military, or possibly architecture when
he answered a call from a friend who told him
about a summer job in quality control at local
eyewear manufacturer DITA. “That was in the
FOR DITA summer of 1995, when I was 22. I started in
quality control and over time I took on varied
responsibilities: from warehouse management,
to lens tinting, lens cutting, and lab work.” Now,
from the perspective of middle age, Castillo
observes: “I was raised in this industry, it’s a big
part of who I am.”
14 / SEPTEMBER - OCTOBER 2020 / www.ENVISIONMAGAZINE.ca /