Good Morning POU!
Today’s feature stylist is the one and only June Ambrose.
Ask revered celebrity stylist June Ambrose when she caught the fashion bug and she gleefully retorts she caught it before she was even born.
“I was smitten and bitten by fashion from inception. When I came out of my mother’s womb I was like, `Where are my designer diapers?’ I used to cut up my grandmother’s curtains and designer dresses for my Barbie dolls. In preschool, I was like, `I want to put on a fashion show,’ and I got all the parents together and I produced a fashion show. I was like 7 years old, like in kindergarten doing fashion shows.
Ms. Ambrose grew up on East Tremont Avenue in the Bronx, in a one-bedroom tenement she shared with her single mother and older sister. As a teenager in the ’80s, she dressed in elaborate get-ups to glamour-flage her severe acne. She was often teased as the odd duck. “I’d wear a ponytail with watches in my hair or mismatched tights,” she said. “They didn’t know what to make of me.”
Her dream to attend LaGuardia High School (the “Fame” school) was dashed when she blew her audition, but she flourished at Julia Richman Talented Unlimited High School, a small public school on the Upper East Side. “If I wasn’t in the play, I was costume designing,” she said. Upon graduating, she skipped college and landed a good job as an office administrator at S. G. Warburg & Company, a London investment bank.
But after two years, she decided finance wasn’t for her. Her mother was devastated, but Ms. Ambrose, armed with a lean stock portfolio she cobbled together while working there, felt liberated. She lived off her portfolio earnings while interning at MCA Records, where she began styling up-and-coming groups, Ultramagnetic MC’s and 702. Before long, she was traveling the globe and styling bigger players like Mary J. Blige, Enrique Iglesias, the Backstreet Boys, Will Smith and Mariah Carey.
In her 20 years in the styling business, Ms. Ambrose has created some of hip-hop’s most iconic looks. She outfitted Sean Combs in shiny metallic leather suits during his chart-topping years, Busta Rhymes in elaborate caftans (“Put Your Hands Where My Eyes Can See”) and Missy Elliott in an inflatable rubber contraption that defied logic and gravity (“The Rain”). She has been Jay’Z’s personal stylist for years.
“She single-handedly cleaned up hip-hop,” said the producer Swizz Beatz (and husband of Alicia Keys), who was wearing a Maison Martin Margiela jacket, Dolce & Gabbana slacks and Lanvin sneakers. “She took guys who were only used to wearing Timberland boots and baggy jeans, and put them in cuff links and Tom Ford suits.”
Mr. Combs added that Ms. Ambrose was one of the first to put him in Gucci. “She is fashion,” said Mr. Combs. “She lives it and breathes it.”
Inspired by the famed costume designer Edith Head and emboldened by her close collaborator, the video director Hype Williams, she felt free to push artistic boundaries. “We weren’t making videos, we were making movies,” she said. “I wanted to bring high fashion to urban music, to bring aspiration, imagination, luxury.”
She has emassed a following of rabid fans who cling to her every word on fashion dos and don’ts. “Darling, it’s all about the angles,” she explained as she turned her cheek to the light, extending her arm just so, before snapping a picture of herself with her ever-present iPhone. She tinkered with the photo and then released it into the Twittersphere (or “Juniverse,” as she calls her online world).
“They want exclusive content, and they want access,” Ms. Ambrose said of her most fervent fans, which she lovingly calls her “style socials.” “And they want authenticity and that’s what I give them.”
Her voracious tweeting — 15 to 20 missives a day — has netted her more than 300,000 followers. With Twitter, Ms. Ambrose, who has outfitted everyone from Rihanna to Kelly Ripa, has found an outlet and a platform, a place where she can share her style musings, must-haves and snapshots. “Fashion mags weren’t really recognizing me, so I created my own space,” she said.
“I’m the Anna Wintour of my Twitter page,” she added.
Always on the cusp of evolving trends, June has starred in her own VH1 show, Styled by June, and launched a shoe line with HSN. Need a bit more fashion knowledge yourself? Lucky you, June compiled all her best style tips and fashion advice in her book, Effortless Style:
