After starting out as a dancer, Joob Stokvis studied costume design in Amsterdam. In 1963, he became the costume designer for the Netherlands Dance Theatre, and later on for Rotterdam's Scapino Ballet and eventually the Dutch National Ballet. Since 1990, he has worked as a freelance costume designer for such ensembles as Les Grands Ballets Canadiens de Montréal, Toulouse's Ballet du Capitole, the ballet company of Berlin's Komische Oper, the Royal Swedish Ballet in Stockholm and the Royal Ballet of Flanders. He has collaborated with choreographers like Alvin Ailey (Knoxville Summer of 1915), George Balanchine, Glen Tetley, Nils Christe, Hans van Manen (Trois Gnossiennes), Benjamin Millepied and Jiři Kylián (Transfigured Night and Symphony of Psalms).