Stephane Silverman founded Castel in 1999 in New York.The company name is chosen after a village in France dear to the founder's heart, "Castellaras," meaning "The Castle of a beautiful place."

Stephane's parents were the US Presidents of the venerable French textile houses, Manuel Canovas and Boussac. While forging his own path, Stephane studied economics and renewable resources in graduate school. After broadening his skill set, he became sales director at Manuel Canovas and also managed export for the large textile firm, P/Kaufmann. Having a very entrepreneurial spirit, in the year 2000 he struck out and started his own fabric company using knowledge from his previous jobs, but also bringing a fresh approach to the industry. He continues to blaze new trails in the interior design and fabric business through a constant stream of new ideas challenging the status quo. The result has manifested itself in a web based software system to manage client orders, logistics and business flow associated to the many details of the industry.

Castel has managed offices in Manhattan, and a flagship showroom in the D+D Building in New York City.

Laura Silverman, Stephane's wife, is the company's Creative Director. Laura's passion is traveling all over, especially to Europe, to seek out the finest textile mills. Castel's perspective has always been to design and source fabrics that are timeless and maintain a unique, well-edited color palette.

Stephane and Laura live in Westport, Connecticut with their three children. Stephane can often be found climbing to the tops of big mountains, paddle boarding, sailing up and down the East Coast or going on family adventures in his1969 vintage VW camper. Laura can be found running marathons or cooking Mediterranean inspired suppers and writing her news letter, Laura Likes.

Stephane can often be heard saying "It's not just fabrics..."