June Ambrose
NEW YORK CITY
June Ambrose has defined the images of many groundbreaking A-list artists in R&B and hip-hop. Think of Missy Elliott’s patent-leather blow-up suit from the 1998 video for The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly). Or the shiny red outfits worn by Sean ‘P Diddy’ Combs and Mase in the Notorious BIG’s Mo Money Mo Problems. Her fearlessness working with those artists, as well as Jay-Z, Mariah Carey, Busta Rhymes and others, would be the ignition behind an entire industry – the fire it needed to burst into the mainstream.
“I’ve always been quite precocious, quite confident,” says Ambrose. “As a young lady, I was really kind of just sure. And I knew that whatever I was gonna do, it was gonna be something that allowed me to dictate what my destiny was going to be.” But while pure drive and serious spunk were the foundation of her success, there were a few key experiences in her teens and early 20s that became the building blocks on which she constructed her career. At a performing-arts high school in New York, she specialised in drama and musical theatre but took costume design as an elective – a skill that would serve her well when she had to create wardrobes from scratch for emerging artists. She opted to work at an investment bank instead of going to college, laying the groundwork to launch her own business and become the “CEO of my own life”, as she describes it. And pivotally, the day she strode into Diddy’s office after he founded Bad Boy Records and offered her a job shaping the look of up-and-coming artists changed the course of her life over the next three decades.
The two bonded over their mutual appreciation for fashion and Herculean levels of ambition. “I walked in like an artist in my actress character, with big glasses and a lot of audacity,” says Ambrose. “We hit it off because I was curious.” They both had a knack for knowing which way the wind was blowing and how to stay one step ahead of it. Ambrose was looking for the opportunity to shift the narrative of the culture – a topic they discussed in those early days. “I thought about how only Black television played rap music,” she says. “And I thought, ‘Why can’t we be on VH1 and MTV?’ That was the goal. Even then I could tell you that hip-hop culture would be the number one genre of music. I’m sitting in it right now.”
But getting there wasn’t easy. Fashion houses were not eager to loan to rappers, so Ambrose designed many of the looks herself, including Elliott’s inflatable outfit and JayZ’s linen suit for his first music video from his 1996 album Reasonable Doubt. She sketched, created patterns, chose fabrics and had the outfits realised in Manhattan’s Garment District. “I thought, ‘I’m Edith Head, I’m a costume designer. I’m Bob Mackie,’ ” says Ambrose with a laugh. “I’m gonna couture everything. Because I couldn’t get to the couture houses, right? So, I created couture houses in New York City. And it was not to the level of the ateliers at, say, Chanel, but for what we needed it to be, it was grand.”
The scrappy environment fostered creativity. If she had borrowed designer clothing for the big crossover hit Mo Money Mo Problems instead of creating Diddy’s and Mase’s shiny red and silver looks, “would we have had the impact that we did”? Ambrose speculates. “It was something that had to be imagined.”
Today, hip-hop stars sit in the front row at nearly every major runway show. But in the early days, there were few forward-thinking designers and executives who would get behind hip-hop. “I will never forget when Lisa Lawrence (a public relations executive representing major European houses), who was one of those pioneers, loaned me my first group of Jean Paul Gaultier pieces,” says Ambrose, who can’t recall the artist she was borrowing for because she has styled more than 200 music videos. “It was a big deal. She told me, ‘Just take it and don’t say anything because they will never understand why I’m giving this to you’.”
As the stars’ popularity and influence grew,
“I thought about how only Black television played rap music. And I thought, ‘Why can’t we be on VH1 and MTV?’ That was the goal.”
collaboration deals followed. Ambrose brought Elliott’s Respect ME collection to the table with Adidas and served as creative director. “I said, ‘Hey, I’m remixing all your stuff anyway’,” she says. “I was taking the tracksuits and reimagining them in leather and luxury fabrics.” It is not lost on her that many of the concepts she and her artists put forward in early-aughts hip-hop now frequently appear on the runway. Reimagined Adidas tracksuits popped up at Balenciaga’s spring 2023 show and new-wave hip-hop artist Travis Scott debuted a collaboration with Dior. “It’s fair to look back at my body of work and say, ‘I was part of something that was meaningful. It was bigger than me’,” Ambrose says. “Street culture has eclipsed ready-to-wear. Ready-to-wear is street culture. Almost every major fashion house has tapped it.”
Now the brands come calling for her. Through her agency, AI Creatives, she is currently working with Puma, which tapped Ambrose in 2020 to launch a womenswear basketball collection. As a creative director, she controls everything from the design to the marketing campaigns. She spent the summer preparing a Puma show at New York Fashion Week for September, and by early 2023, just in time for the 50th anniversary of hip-hop, she will release her first eponymous collection. “It is an aha moment,” says Ambrose. “I feel like I’m the wizard behind the curtain.”