BIO

Mimi Levitas

Mimi Levitas was born in Cape Town South Africa.
A psychology student turned fine art student, turned fashion retailer, then fashion designer, arrived in Los Angeles in 1986 in search of the American dream. Opera by Mimi, was launched in 1987 and her creativity and retail success garnered her nominations as California rising star of the year in 1998 and designer of the year in 1999.

After her launch of CPX and a year as designer at Bebe, she opened up the The Focus Design Group, a consulting company, designing and producing sweater collections for DKNY, Diane von Furstenburg, Joie, Nicole Miller, Three dots, Seven for all Mankind, Michael Stars and Tocca to name a few. She worked as a design and sourcing consultant for Fitigues and on the birth of brands Bailey 44 and Walter. She remained loyal to her clients working with some of them for over 7 years.

Her years as a design chameleon in the contemporary men's and woman's arena, creating product, bringing new ideas and introducing new product classifications, especially to the exploding t shirt and jeans market, fostered huge growth opportunities for her clients. Sometimes these brands hung in the same showrooms and all showed at the Coterie. Mimi gained new skills and abilities to focus on many different brands at the same time, staying true to the essence and DNA of each one, without cross polluting, canabalizing the market share or convoluting the vision. This unique talent and her patience to teach and empower the CEOs of these companies to think in a new way, earned her a fabulous reputation in the industry, that she still holds today.

After meeting Sarah Wilsterman in 2004 she finally felt she had found the partner to do this for herself. In August 2005 Wilster was born. Mimi continued to consult with her clients till 2009.

Her caring for the people she works with and her ability to listen and hear what the clients are saying and not saying, has made her a wonderful partner, in creating labels for retailers, either branded, under Wilster or private label.

In 2011 she created the Wilster Venture Capitol fund to invest in new talent, provide capitol to growing businesses and purchase existing brands.

Mimi is the CEO and Creative Director of Wilster. Her focus is on business development, finance, human resources, merchandising and sales and marketing.

Sarah Wilsterman

Sarah Wilsterman was born in Walnut California to an aero space engineer mother and a astro physicist father.

Going against the grain, she followed her artistic persutes to UCLA where she earned a Bachelor's Degree in Fine arts and Architecture in 1996.

With a non marketable artist degree, she worked as a barrista at the famous Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf on Sunset Blvd where she was bitten by the fashion bug. After one of her clients got her an internship with Richard Tyler, her preoccupation with fashion, tailoring and precision began.

She worked as a woven designer at Arden b from 2001 to 2004 where she zoned her skill at creating best sellers and learning that sell through's are more important than fashion art and that production was a precursor to design. She was continuously given troubled categories turning bad business into the top performing areas. Her competitive nature and desire to continuously strive for perfection and performance made her a valuable asset to the team. At the time she left, Arden b had 108 stores.

In 2005 she was recruited by Marciano the contemporary division of Guess, and held the title of Senior Wovens Designer. After meeting Mimi Levitas she joined the Focus Design Group working with Mimi on all her elite accounts, before partnering with Mimi in creating a new vision. In August 2005 the Wilster apparel Group was born.

Sarah is the President of The Wilster Apparel Group, with design, operations and production under her steership.