If you’ve heard the name Jose Stemkels, you probably know her as Titus Welliver’s ex-wife. But that label does her career a real disservice. Stemkels is a Dutch-South African fashion consultant who built two businesses across three continents, bringing a level of expertise to international fashion that most people working in the industry today don’t possess.
The real story is about a woman who went from retail floors in Holland to running operations for global fashion brands, then built her own luxury label. This is someone who understands how fashion actually works, not just how it looks on Instagram.
From South Africa to the Netherlands: How It All Started
Jose Stemkels was born in Tembisa, South Africa, on December 29, 1987. She didn’t spend much of her childhood there, though. Her family moved to the Netherlands early on, where she grew up and built her foundational understanding of European fashion culture.
Growing up in Holland during the 1990s meant being surrounded by a country with serious fashion chops. Unlike what many assume about Dutch design minimalist, neutral, clean the Netherlands has always punched above its weight in international fashion manufacturing and retail. Stemkels absorbed that energy.
She got her first real job while still in school at Mata Hari, a Dutch multi-chain retail store. She progressed through the ranks from retail clerk to assistant manager and finally store manager thanks to her dedication. That might sound like a typical retail climb, but working retail taught her something crucial: how consumers actually behave versus how brands think they’ll behave.
The Move to International Fashion: Germany and Esprit
At 21, Stemkels moved to Düsseldorf, Germany, to work as a fashion wholesaler managing Disney-licensed apparel. This was the 1990s, before the internet killed wholesale fashion as we knew it. Managing licensed Disney products across European department stores wasn’t glamorous, but it was education in global supply chains.
In 1995, she began working for Esprit, an international fashion company. This became the defining decade of her career. She spent about ten years with Esprit, working in several major fashion cities including Hong Kong, New York, Los Angeles, and Germany.
She worked closely with top fashion leaders like Heinz Krogner and Michael Ying, and became a senior project manager. While at Esprit, she wasn’t in a creative department. She was handling inventory, coordinating between Asia manufacturing and European retail, managing stock during sale seasons, watching which styles locals actually bought versus which they ignored. This ground-level experience later informed her consulting advice to brands spending millions on U.S. market entry.
Her time in Hong Kong proved especially formative. She watched how designs created in California got produced in China, then shipped back to American and European stores, giving her firsthand understanding of how the supply chain connects design, production, and retail.
Building Expertise: The Great China Wall and Beyond
After Esprit, Stemkels didn’t take an office job at another big corporation. She worked with The Great China Wall, where she served as an international account manager. The Great China Wall was a brand specializing in luxury casualwear sold in high-end boutiques around the world.
Later, she became the President of Dept & JC RAGS, a Dutch clothing brand, helping it expand into the American market before briefly working as Vice President of The House of Quirky.
By the time she reached her 30s, Stemkels had worked in multiple time zones, managed relationships between manufacturers and retailers across continents, and developed a deep understanding of which fashion strategies actually move products versus which ones look good in PowerPoint presentations.
Sunrise Fashion Consulting: When Experience Becomes Business
After working for large global brands, Jose launched her own business Sunrise Fashion Consulting in 2014. The timing wasn’t random. By 2014, she had two decades of industry experience and a network of connections most young consultants never build in a lifetime.
Sunrise Fashion Consulting gives fashion companies from abroad the perfect solution on how to start their journey in the U.S. market, offering consulting, strategy planning, team building, warehousing, shipping, customs opportunities, PR, marketing, and trend forecasts.
This is a specific niche. European and Asian brands want to sell in America but don’t know how. They understand manufacturing and design. They don’t understand American retail, department store buyers, or why something that crushed sales in Milan might flop in Manhattan. Stemkels does. Having served this market for over 14 years, she has established and maintained connections towards department stores and boutiques.
Eywasouls Malibu: From Consulting to Creation
In 2017, Stemkels took her expertise one step further. She partnered with Jane Munro-Altinok to found Eywasouls Malibu after discovering a shared love of maxi dresses.
This matters because it shows she didn’t just advise other brands on strategy. She tested her own theories through her own product. The brand focuses on stylish bohemian maxi dresses designed for comfort and beauty, inspired by the Malibu lifestyle.
Eywasouls Malibu constructs pieces using high-grade fabrics such as cotton voile, chiffon and silk, with original prints giving each piece its own charm. The brand’s dresses are casual yet elegant, sophisticated, but not pretentious embodying the Malibu lifestyle.
The brand occupies a specific market position: elevated resort wear. Not fast fashion, not haute couture, but well-made pieces that justify premium prices without couture markups. Eywasouls fills a specific niche—elevated casual wear for women who want resort-style clothing that doesn’t look cheap. That positioning requires understanding both production costs and what consumers will actually pay. Stemkels knows both.
The brand’s cotton-voile, chiffon and silk designs are defined by playful prints that translate effortlessly from vacation to the city. Many women like the brand because the dresses are made for different body types.
Marriage, Divorce, and Moving Forward
Most of what people know about Jose Stemkels centers on her marriage to actor Titus Welliver. She married Titus Welliver, a fashion consultant and former model, at Saddle Peak Lodge in Calabasas, California on April 12, 2014.
In 2019, Titus Welliver filed for legal separation, and their divorce was finalized in 2021. According to the divorce settlement, Welliver got sole custody of his daughter, Cora, then 14. Stemkels retained her personal belongings and financial assets, including a 2017 Range Rover, jewelry, furniture, and six horses they had owned together. She was also awarded $50,000 as a lump sum and $27,000 per month in spousal support for the remainder of 2021.
What stands out about the separation is how professionally it was handled. The divorce was private, calm, and handled with care. Stemkels didn’t turn it into tabloid fodder. She kept her focus on her businesses.
Life After Divorce: Quiet Strength
As of 2025, Jose Stemkels continues to live in Malibu, California. She maintains a quiet, private lifestyle and stays out of the spotlight. Her Instagram account is set to private, and she has not made any public announcements about new relationships.
She has an estimated net worth of around $1 million, earned through her fashion consulting firm and boutique fashion label. That wealth is hers. She built it before marriage and expanded it after. She built her career long before marriage and stayed successful after divorce. Her story is not about fame, but about steady work, smart choices, and staying true to herself.
She continues to inspire people who believe success does not need loud attention. Sometimes, quiet strength speaks the loudest.
The Real Jose Stemkels: Beyond the Celebrity Label
Here’s what makes her story worth knowing: Stemkels didn’t wait for fame to validate her work. She didn’t become a fashion consultant because she married an actor. She was the stepmother to Titus Welliver’s children from a previous relationship and adopted his youngest child, whose mother had passed, which shows character. But that chapter was just one part of a much longer career.
The real narrative is about someone who understood three separate continents’ fashion markets, who could walk into a Hong Kong factory and spot quality issues, who knew which retail tricks worked in America but flopped in Europe, and who eventually built a brand that actually sells.
She runs Sunrise Fashion Consulting and co-founded Eywasouls Malibu, helping European brands enter American markets, with a path that started on retail floors in the Netherlands and grew into boardrooms in Hong Kong and Los Angeles.
When you shop Eywasouls Malibu, you’re not buying a celebrity line made by a big conglomerate with her name slapped on it. You’re buying from someone who actually knows fashion from the ground up. That’s worth knowing.
Read More About: Jon Eicholtz
