Sanne Hamers: The Dutch Stylist Who Built a Life Beyond the Spotlight

Table of Contents

Quick Bio

Detail	Info
Full Name	Sanne Lotto Hamers
Born	June 1987, Dronten, Netherlands
Nationality	Dutch-American (dual citizenship)
Occupation	Fashion stylist, design consultant
Known For	Former wife of actor Wyatt Russell; personal stylist to Goldie Hawn; internship with Rachel Zoe
Education	University of Groningen
Current Partner	Joe Young
Children	Skipper Cassin Young (born March 2021)
Current Role	Design consultant, California Closets; runs @design.by.sanne on Instagram

Who Sanne Hamers Is and Why Her Story Deserves Its Own Chapter

Search the name Sanne Hamers online and the first thing that comes back at you is a label: Wyatt Russell‘s ex-wife. It is the framing that almost every article about her leads with, as if her identity begins and ends with a marriage that lasted a few years and ended more than a decade ago.

But spend any time actually looking at what Sanne has done with her life — before, during, and especially after that marriage — and a much more interesting picture emerges. A Dutch woman who moved across the world, broke into the fashion industry through her own effort and talent, worked alongside one of Hollywood’s most influential celebrity stylists, built a client relationship with a genuine Oscar-winning movie star, and then — after the marriage ended — quietly reinvented herself again in a completely different creative direction.

This is not the story of a woman who was famous because she married someone famous. It is the story of a woman who made her own way and happened, for a few years, to be married to someone whose last name people recognised. There is a difference between the two.

A Dutch Childhood: Dronten, Amsterdam, and Growing Up

Sanne Lotto Hamers was born in June 1987 in Dronten — a planned town in the Flevoland province of the Netherlands, the kind of place that was literally built on reclaimed land and that most people outside Holland have never heard of. It is orderly, quiet, and not exactly a launching pad for a fashion career. Which is probably part of why her family moved.

She grew up in Amsterdam, the city that most people think of when they picture the Netherlands — and for good reason. Amsterdam has always been a place where design, culture, fashion, and commerce collide in unusually close proximity. Growing up there gives you an eye for aesthetics almost by osmosis. The architecture is distinctive. The fashion scene, while not Paris-level famous, is genuinely vibrant. And the Dutch relationship with function and form — beauty that is also practical, design that earns its keep — runs through the culture in ways that shape how people see things even without formal training.

Sanne’s childhood in Amsterdam planted the seeds of what would become her professional identity. A love of visual organisation. An attention to how things look and how they work together. That instinct for composition that some people are born with and others spend years trying to develop.

University and the Move North: Groningen

After finishing her schooling in Amsterdam, Sanne headed north. She enrolled at the University of Groningen — one of the oldest and most respected universities in the Netherlands, located in the country’s second-largest northern city. Groningen is a university town in the truest sense. Tens of thousands of students make it feel young and alive in a way that belies its northern latitude and relatively small population.

What she studied at Groningen is not confirmed by the available record. But the city shaped her in a different way entirely — one she probably did not anticipate when she enrolled.

Groningen had a professional ice hockey team: the Groninger Grizzlies. And in 2009, a certain American goaltender with a famous last name joined the club.

That encounter in Groningen — at a local salsa bar, where Sanne was still a student and Wyatt was a newly arrived hockey player far from home — turned out to be the meeting that would define how the rest of the world came to know her name.

Building a Career as a Stylist

Before the relationship with Wyatt developed into something serious, and before any Hollywood adjacency entered the picture, Sanne was already working toward a career in fashion styling. She had the instinct for it — that natural ability to see how clothes, colour, and composition interact — and she was developing the practical skills to go with it.

She was working as a stylist in the Netherlands during the early years of her relationship with Wyatt. It was real professional work, not a hobby dressed up with a job title. And when the relationship eventually led to marriage and a transatlantic relocation to California, she did not put that career on hold. She took it with her.

Moving from a European city to Los Angeles is a significant adjustment for anyone. Moving there as the wife of an emerging actor — whose mother happened to be Goldie Hawn, one of the most recognisable faces in Hollywood history — introduces a layer of social navigation that most people never have to think about.

What Sanne did with that unusual situation is genuinely interesting. Rather than simply being present at events and attending things as a plus-one, she used the connections available to her to deepen her professional life.

Goldie Hawn — her mother-in-law during the marriage — introduced Sanne to Rachel Zoe, the celebrity stylist whose influence in Hollywood during the 2000s and 2010s was almost impossible to overstate. Zoe had dressed a generation of A-list actresses for red carpets, awards ceremonies, and magazine covers. Her aesthetic — that particular blend of vintage-luxe, flowing silhouette, and effortless glamour — had genuinely shaped how celebrity women dressed in that era.

Being given an introduction to someone at that level in the fashion industry is an opportunity. What you do with the introduction is the actual test. Sanne interned with Rachel Zoe, learning from the inside how a major celebrity styling operation actually works. The pace, the client relationships, the decisions made under pressure before a red carpet or a shoot — all of it is very different from styling in a controlled studio environment.

She also took on something more personal: she became Goldie Hawn’s own stylist. Not just someone who dressed the actress for a single event, but a genuine ongoing professional relationship. The fact that this connection reportedly continued even after the marriage to Wyatt ended says a great deal about the quality of the work Sanne was doing and the strength of the relationship she built with her former mother-in-law.

Marriage to Wyatt Russell: The Hollywood Chapter

Sanne and Wyatt married in 2012, formalising a relationship that had begun two years earlier in that Groningen salsa bar. She was twenty-four. He was twenty-five. Both were still figuring out what their professional lives would look like in the long run.

The marriage required Sanne to make significant adjustments. Moving to Malibu, California — where the couple set up their home — meant adapting to a completely different social world. The scrutiny that surrounds the children of major Hollywood celebrities is different from ordinary fame. It reaches family members and spouses. Sanne spoke about this in an interview with Grazia magazine, describing the initial strangeness of suddenly being associated with one of Hollywood’s most legendary families, and how that level of attention gradually became normal.

Wyatt was, at this point, still transitioning from professional hockey — his playing career had been curtailed by injury in 2010 — into acting. He was beginning to build his on-screen profile, with a small role in This Is 40 in 2012 and a more visible turn in 22 Jump Street in 2014. The household during these years was one where two careers were simultaneously in motion.

Sanne’s styling work in Los Angeles continued. She attended industry events alongside Wyatt — the photographs from those years show them at film premieres, cinema events, and various Hollywood functions. She was present in that world but never subsumed by it. She always maintained the sense of someone who had their own professional identity running alongside the marriage, rather than someone whose identity was defined by it.

Separation, Divorce, and Rebuilding

The marriage did not survive. Sanne and Wyatt separated in March 2015 — roughly three years into their marriage. The divorce was finalised in October 2017, more than two years after the separation. No children were involved. Neither party made public statements about what went wrong, and neither has subsequently given detailed interviews about the breakdown of the relationship.

What is clear is that the period between separation and final divorce was one in which Sanne’s life was changing significantly. A marriage ending is its own kind of disruption even when both people handle it with dignity. And doing so while living in a country that was not your own, in a city built around an industry you were adjacent to but not fully inside, adds complexity.

What Sanne did in the years that followed says a lot about who she is. She did not make the divorce part of her public identity. She did not give the interviews that the celebrity press was presumably interested in. She did not leverage the connection to Wyatt’s family for continued visibility. She simply got on with building her life in a different direction.

She pivoted. The fashion styling work was replaced, gradually, by something new: interior design and organisation consulting. Specifically, she joined California Closets — a well-known California-based interior design firm that specialises in helping people redesign their living spaces, with a particular focus on organisation and functional aesthetics. The work sits right at the intersection of visual design and practical function — exactly the territory that Sanne’s Dutch design instincts had always been drawn to.

She began sharing this work on Instagram under the handle @design.by.sanne, building a presence that reflected her actual professional work rather than her connection to anyone else’s name.

Life After Wyatt: Love Again and Becoming a Mother

Some time after the divorce was finalised, Sanne found her way back to a relationship. She began seeing Joe Young, and the two built something steady and real together.

In March 2021, Sanne gave birth to her first child — a son named Skipper Cassin Young. It is a name with a distinctive character: simultaneously nautical and grounded, the kind of name that suggests the people who gave it put thought into it. Skipper’s birth appears to have been a significant turning point for Sanne — the beginning of what is, by the evidence available, a genuinely happy family life in California.

The timing is notable in another way. March 2021 was also the month that Wyatt Russell’s second wife, actress Meredith Hagner, gave birth to their first son, Buddy. Two chapters that had once intersected were moving forward on parallel tracks, each finding its own equilibrium.

Sanne has documented aspects of her life as a mother on social media — sharing moments of daily life alongside her design work — but she has maintained the same basic approach that has characterised her whole post-divorce existence: present enough to connect, private enough to protect what actually matters.

The Wyatt Russell Connection: Understanding the Family

It helps to understand who Wyatt Russell is in order to fully understand why Sanne’s name is so frequently attached to his in searches.

Wyatt is the son of Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn — two of the most enduringly famous and beloved figures in Hollywood history. Kurt Russell’s filmography spans five decades and includes roles in Escape from New York, The Thing, Tombstone, Backdraft, and many others. Goldie Hawn is an Oscar-winning actress whose work in comedies and dramas across the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s made her a genuine star of the first order.

Wyatt grew up in that environment and then spent nearly a decade as a professional ice hockey goaltender — playing at various levels across North America and Europe, including his time with the Groninger Grizzlies where he met Sanne — before injuries ended his playing career and he turned seriously to acting. His career has included work in 22 Jump Street, Overlord, Ingrid Goes West, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier on Disney+, and most recently the Apple TV+ series Monarch: Legacy of Monsters.

After his marriage to Sanne ended, he met actress Meredith Hagner on the set of Folk Hero and Funny Guy in 2015. They married in August 2019 and have two sons together, Buddy and Boone.

Wyatt’s reported net worth sits around $2 million — not enormous by Hollywood standards, but consistent with a career that is still building momentum.

Earnings and Net Worth: An Honest Assessment

Sanne’s own financial picture is genuinely difficult to pin down, and anyone who gives you a precise number is guessing.

What we know: she worked as a fashion stylist in the Netherlands and then in Los Angeles for a period of several years. High-end celebrity styling, when you are working in the LA market with A-list clients, can be lucrative — rates vary widely, but experienced stylists working with major clients at significant events can earn substantial fees. Working with Goldie Hawn as a personal client, and interning within Rachel Zoe’s operation, would have put her at a level of the market where compensation is meaningful.

Since transitioning to design consulting, she works at California Closets, where the median annual compensation for a design consultant in California ranges from approximately $25,000 to $82,000 depending on experience, client base, and commission structures. This is a wide range, and someone with Sanne’s aesthetic background and client skills would likely sit toward the upper end.

The divorce from Wyatt involved no children and no publicly disclosed settlement. Whatever financial arrangements were made remain entirely private.

Overall, Sanne’s financial situation appears comfortable and self-built — the income of a working professional in California who has made her own career choices rather than someone living on residual celebrity wealth.

What She Is Doing Now

The most recent picture of Sanne Hamers’ life is a domestic and professional one. She is based in California. She is a mother to Skipper, now around five years old. She is in a relationship with Joe Young. She does design consulting work, sharing the results through her @design.by.sanne Instagram presence. And she has maintained, throughout all of it, the quality that has perhaps defined her most consistently: a preference for a private life over a public one.

Goldie Hawn reportedly remains a client — the professional relationship that outlasted the marriage, a detail that speaks both to the warmth of the personal connection and to the quality of the work Sanne delivered.

Final Words

What strikes you most about Sanne Hamers’ story, if you sit with it for a moment, is the consistency of her instincts.

She was born in a small Dutch town and grew up in a city famous for beautiful, purposeful design. She went north to study, met a man who pulled her into a world she had no particular connection to, and then navigated that world on her own terms — building a real career, maintaining real professional relationships, and never quite becoming the supporting character that the tabloid framing wanted her to be.

When the marriage ended, she did not fight the narrative or attempt to reclaim visibility through it. She redirected her energy entirely. She moved from fashion to interiors. From celebrity-adjacent to independently built. From the wife of an actor to the mother of a child with her own name.

The label that Google still attaches to her — “Wyatt Russell’s ex-wife” — is technically accurate and practically irrelevant. The more honest description of Sanne Hamers is this: a Dutch woman who moved to America, made a career, built a life, lost a marriage, and then built a better one.

That story does not need a famous last name to make it interesting.

FAQs

1. Who is Sanne Hamers?

Sanne Hamers is a Dutch-American fashion stylist and design consultant, born in Dronten, Netherlands in June 1987. She is best known publicly as the former wife of actor Wyatt Russell, though she has built an independent professional career as a stylist and later as an interior design consultant in California.

2. Where was Sanne Hamers born and raised?

She was born in Dronten, in the Flevoland province of the Netherlands, and grew up in Amsterdam. She later moved to Groningen in the north of the Netherlands for university, and after her marriage relocated to California, where she has remained.

3. How did Sanne Hamers and Wyatt Russell meet?

They met in Groningen, the Netherlands, around 2009–2010 when Wyatt was playing for the Groninger Grizzlies ice hockey team. They crossed paths at a local salsa bar while Sanne was still a university student, and began a relationship from there.

4. When did Sanne Hamers and Wyatt Russell get married?

They married in 2012. Some sources cite March 14, 2012 as the wedding date. The marriage followed roughly two years of dating.

5. Why did Sanne Hamers and Wyatt Russell divorce?

Neither Sanne nor Wyatt has spoken publicly about the reasons for their separation. They parted ways in March 2015 and the divorce was officially finalised in October 2017. No public statement or confirmed explanation has ever been provided by either party.

6. Did Sanne Hamers and Wyatt Russell have children together?

No. The couple did not have children during their marriage, and no children were involved in their divorce proceedings.

7. What did Sanne Hamers do professionally?

Sanne worked as a fashion stylist both in the Netherlands and in the United States. After relocating to Los Angeles following her marriage, her mother-in-law Goldie Hawn introduced her to celebrity stylist Rachel Zoe, with whom she completed an internship. She also became Goldie Hawn’s personal stylist — a professional relationship that reportedly continued beyond the marriage. After her divorce, she transitioned into interior design consulting, joining California Closets.

8. Is Sanne Hamers married now?

There is no confirmed information that she has remarried. Following her divorce from Wyatt Russell, she began a relationship with a partner named Joe Young, with whom she has a son.

9. Does Sanne Hamers have children?

Yes. Her son Skipper Cassin Young was born in March 2021, from her relationship with Joe Young. He has no connection to Wyatt Russell.

10. Where does Sanne Hamers live now?

She lives in California, where she has been based since relocating to the United States during her marriage to Wyatt Russell. She works as a design consultant and shares her projects on Instagram.

11. What is Sanne Hamers’ Instagram?

She manages a professional Instagram account under the handle @design.by.sanne, through which she shares her interior design and organisation consulting work.

12. What is Sanne Hamers’ net worth?

No confirmed figure is publicly available. Her income derives from her design consulting career in California, where salaries for her role range broadly from approximately $25,000 to over $80,000 annually. Her years as a celebrity stylist working with high-profile clients in Los Angeles would also have generated meaningful income. No details of any financial settlement from her divorce have ever been made public.

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