NATALY CASTAÑEDA
Fashion & Jewelry Designer / Stylist
About Me
Nataly
Castañeda's
love affair with fashion and jewelry started at a very young age, her grandparents, as well as her mom, have a talent for fashion thus it runs in her family.
In her teen years, Nataly's family and her were expats in Europe for four years, living in a city like Amsterdam and studying at an international school gave her a unique opportunity that completely changed her life, Nataly had the chance to be confronted with classmates from all around the world as well as traveling quite extensively, getting to know and experience different cultures and languages. That's when the wanderlust or travel bug became a part of her, and it's one of her main sources of inspiration when creating a collection, whether it's jewelry, or clothing or even styling for a certain client or photoshoot.
While Nataly was in Amsterdam, at the end of 8th grade was asked to structure a project in which she will be working on during her last year of middle school meaning 9th grade, by that time, on her teen years she had a slight obsession with her roots and Colombia since she was so far away, therefore, she immediately created a plan taking advantage of her summer holidays in Colombia to learn jewelry making and represent each Colombian region on a jewelry set, each one using different gemstones, it turns out to be very successful
Although once Nataly graduated high school, she focused more on her fashion career and in garments, from time to time she would actually work on some jewelry pieces for each collection, yet they weren't the protagonist. Nevertheless, 6 years ago, Nataly and her family became expats again, this time in the Caribbean, exposing herself once again to a whole different culture, that might look similar to Colombian Culture but it definitely isn't, as well as continuing her jewelry journey, which is one of the best gifts that The Dominican Republic has given her.
Nataly' s encounter with her latent passion, jewelry, was simply serendipity. While she was in the Dominican Republic waiting to go Milan to start one of her master's degree, she enrolled on a variety of courses, in which jewelry design was one of them, yet so many time had gone by that she wasn't really sure she could make it, it seemed like a whole different and challenging world to her. However, once Nataly started designing, actually making jewelry and learning new techniques, she was completely mesmerized.
by it and with the encouragement of her tutor, she actually saw the possibility of creating a jewelry line, a very special and particular line, which is now called "Ephemeral Opulence".
Once she got to Milan to start her first Master's degree in Istituto Marangoni, which was Fashion Styling & Portfolio, she was so passionate about jewelry and making it, that on every single photoshoot she was preparing and styling, she would actually design and make some jewelry pieces for the model to wear, it was like a need, something that she had to create and show to the world while she could actually fully focus on her jewelry line. Luckily, a few years after she started doing so, she started designing "Lotus" which is its second collection, in which the protagonist is Kwan Yin, a very beloved deity in Asia as well as for herself.
While Nataly was designing and making "Lotus" between Milan and The Dominican Republic, she decided to take this jewelry dream to a whole new level and enrolled in her second Master's degree, it was High Jewelry Design, once again her beloved city Milano & in Marangoni, even though it wasn't easy at the beginning for her, and she felt her jewelry knowledge was almost null, Nataly pushed myself to the limit and the results were amazing, ended up gaining knowledge about all the precious, semiprecious and colored gemstones as well as designing jewelry collections for famous italian jewelry brands such as Schreiber Gioielli and Damiani.
She considers herself a very creative yet perfectionist person, which in this case has helped a lot to follow her passion and goals throughout her life. Ever since 2016, she has fully immersed on " Ephemeral Opulence" happily working and injecting all her passion, creativity, and perseverance on the brand, in order for it to sky rocket and embrace women to be different, daring to stand out from the crown and embrace their differences and corkiness.
Nowadays, after spending spending a lot of time in Barcelona, one of her favorites cities where she always gets inspired, she still lives in Milan but travels to the Dominican Republic and very often, in which right now she is working on a project for the Amber World Museum, designing an exclusive collection around Amber & Larimar gemstones to be sold on their site, also she is in the process of adding a fine jewelry line to Ephemeral Opulence making a tribute to her Colombian Pre-Colombian Culture.