June Ambrose is stepping into her next chapter.

The award-winning creative director, entrepreneur and costume designer, who has styled the likes of Missy Elliott, Mary J. Blige, Jay-Z and more, is adding the role of global ambassador and creative director of Naturalizer to her impressive 30-year-plus portfolio.

“I’m really excited about this. I think people were looking to see what was going to be next for me after my exit from my last creative director role at Puma,” Ambrose said in an exclusive interview.

Prior to her partnership with Naturalizer, she was appointed creative director of Puma Hops in 2021. During her three-year tenure, Ambrose spearheaded the brand’s first women’s basketball line and led creative direction of the sports brand’s 2022 New York Fashion Week runway show. She parted ways with the brand when her contract expired at the end of 2023.

Last year, the costume designer created nearly 250 looks for Elliott’s North American “Out of This World” tour, recently led the wardrobe design and served as creative director of the hip-hop artist’s first Coachella performance and has been simultaneously working on new projects in the “Juniverse.”

“With Puma, we were launching a division then, but I still think that we’re also launching a new conversation,” she said. Now, with Naturalizer, a division of footwear giant Caleres, she’s working to pioneer the “next generation of how we see sport, fashion and lifestyle” by debuting the first collaborative collection as part of the brand’s introduction of its new dedicated label, Naturalizer Sport. Starting in spring 2026, the brand will release three drops throughout the year with six styles per drop. Capsules will be available for purchase on Naturalizer’s e-commerce and with select retail partners.

“We deeply value the talent within our walls — yet we also recognize that real design momentum often comes from those living at the edge of what’s next. By partnering with visionaries like June Ambrose —who doesn’t just observe sneaker culture but helps write its future — we’re tapping into the kinds of creative forces and design talent that move fashion forward. It’s in that fusion — internal precision and external provocation — that true innovation happens,” Jay Schmidt, president and chief executive officer of Caleres, told WWD.

On a conference call with Wall Street analysts last week, Schmidt said while the Naturalizer brand saw sales in the quarter fall, it did maintain its market share. For Caleres overall, first-quarter sales slipped 6.8 percent to $612.2 million in a tough market hit by economic uncertainty and the Trump administration’s on-again, off-again tariffs.

However, “Sneakers and casuals grew in penetration to the total, and sandal styles were up, led by strong performance from new footbed styles,” Schmidt said on the call. “While naturalizer.com saw lower sales in the quarter, conversion was up double digits,” he added. Furthermore, the brand is seeing growth with its largest wholesale partners, including Macy’s Herald Square.

“The continued growth and evolution of Naturalizer Sport marks a pivotal moment for the brand.  We’re not just joining the fashion sneaker space — we’re doing so with the same intention, integrity, and design expertise that have defined Naturalizer’s dress shoes for nearly a century,” Schmidt told WWD.

Ambrose’s three-decade-plus legacy as a trailblazer, visionary and cultural force aligns with Naturalizer, which touts itself as the first U.S. brand to create shoes specifically designed to the contours of a woman’s foot, with a nearly 100-year promise to put women first.

Last year, Naturalizer debuted its global inclusivity ambassador collective with founding members Lauren Chan and Deepica Mutyala, founder and CEO of inclusive beauty brand Live Tinted. The collective’s aim is to further this commitment with a focus on inclusivity, comfort and style for every woman. The brand previously collaborated with Pnina Tornai and Tracy Reese.

Schmidt explained that the brand sees each collaboration as an opportunity to reach new audiences that are not defined by age but mindset.

“June brings a multicultural, multigenerational perspective to everything she does. Her powerful advocacy and bold creative energy are matched by a rare ability to provoke without alienating,” he said of Ambrose, adding the brand believes their partnership will reach new consumers who are inspired by intentionality, originality and “the scarcity that makes a product feel special.”

“Naturalizer has always put women first — bringing June into the conversation underscores our appreciation that sneaker culture is authored by its innovators and creatives. A true fashion gatekeeper, June has shaped style from the street to the stage to the runway for over three decades, blending hip-hop, high fashion and unapologetic individuality. She is known for elevating sneakers to an essential part of fashion,” Schmidt said.

With Ambrose, the footwear brand is continuing its collaboration series and bringing to life both parties’ shared values of “self-expression, effortless style and footwear that never asks you to choose between function and fashion,” Schmidt said.

“Like us, June believes comfort is nonnegotiable,” the CEO explained, adding that since the inception of their partnership, Ambrose has shown respect for the footwear brand’s heritage by “challenging and reinterpreting our design codes in all the right ways.”

It also reflects Ambrose’s commitment to approaching partnerships with intention.

“The fact that they had designed shoes specifically for women when most shoes were worn for men, that moved me,” Ambrose explained. “I thought, ‘Wow, they’re not just talking to talk, they’re walking the walk.’ Those are the kind of people that I want to be in business with.”

It’s not just about fashion, she added, but also advocacy and legacy work. 

“Especially knowing that they’ve been in business so long, they’re going to focus on the things that other brands may not really care as much about, like comfort. The fact that you know they’re being intentional about merging style and comfort — you don’t get that,” she said, expressing that in the wider market, the stance that if a women’s shoe solely looks good, “Then it’s all a fashionista ‘really needs’ is rude.”

Ambrose added she loved the opportunity to create fashion for women without compromise.

“That to me is very exciting — I get to take them into this next chapter, into this ethos. It taps into so many different generations, so many different multiculturalisms and dialogues. It’s generational as well. The idea that I have a 21-year-old daughter and I’m 54 years old — we still share clothes, we share shoes. That’s the kind of bridge that I’m trying to build. Fashion is a shared language, and it should transcend ages,” she explained. “We’re tapping into that twentysomething…but we’re still speaking to the 55 year old.”

Without compromise also means offering luxe, size-inclusive products at a “respectable price point,” she said. The June Ambrose x Naturalizer collaboration ranges from $100 to $225, with select styles going up to size 13.

“I remember being in a situation before where guys wanted to wear our basketball sneakers, but we didn’t have them in their sizes. I think this opportunity, because Naturalizer is very inclusive with size ranges, means that we’re going to see a very broad range of individuals participating and being part of the universe, which I love,” she said.

Ambrose added that she’s excited to tap into Naturalizer’s existing customer and “grow with her” by tapping into her emotions and authentically expanding her style choices.

Tapping into “ankles, calves, length and width” has been important to her collaborative design process, which has included diving into the brand’s deep archive.

Ambrose said her creative process for Naturalizer is an extension of what she’s been able to build in the apparel space, with storytelling and her own “AI,” or “authentic intelligence” at the forefront. Similar to her work with celebrity talents, she’s pushing forward the brand’s fashion look outside of its comfort zone without compromising its integrity.

“What that is to me is provocation without alienation,” she explained. “Naturalizer is really great at storytelling as well, and I know we plan on really helping the consumer see the story in a 360 way. We won’t just sell the sneaker. We’re selling the lifestyle. We’re selling that album.”

The June Ambrose x Naturalizer collaboration aims to attract both the brand’s loyal customers and new audiences — expanding its culture and community through Ambrose’s style influence and history of breaking boundaries and using fashion as a platform for voice, visibility and empowerment.

“My role is to keep the fashion honest and intentional — to build pieces that perform, that express, that expand the brand’s potential in a real way, not in a way that people look at it and think that they’re trying to be something that they’re not. That’s always been my approach,” she said. “Every artist that I’ve touched, it’s been about developing this authentic image that feels true to not just the music, but to that actual artist. I think that philosophy really goes hand in hand in creating this new division and conversation.”

While the brand has included sneakers within its main collections for years, she added that the introduction of Naturalizer Sport, with its first collaboration for spring 2026 under her creative direction is significant. The brand isn’t “just dipping their toe into the sneaker culture,” she said, but displaying a serious dedication to having a specific point of view and distinct style rooted in hybrid performance.

“It’s always been more than just clothes. It’s about using style as a language. I like to use it to empower women, and men, to move through the world with boldness and clarity,” Ambrose said, citing authenticity as key to everything she does. “For me, life is a sport, and I’m always going to play to win. I’ve always believed fashion should perform. It should keep up with you without even having to say a word. I like to be able to use fashion as a visual language, and I think we can do the same in this space as well with footwear.

“Throughout my career, I’ve done it with icons. When you think about it, you see the image first before sometimes you even hear the music. It really is like building a building or writing a script. It really is developing those characters, and each shoe, to me, is a character,” Ambrose said of her approach.

These characters — spanning from the “athletic girly” to the “sophisticated girly,” she said — all live within Ambrose’s “Juniverse.”

While the collection is still being designed, the parties shared hints of what’s to come: sculptural heels engineered for stamina and balance; runway-ready sneakers crafted for real-life movement, and sleeker silhouettes with athletic undertones.

Ambrose explained that pushing the envelope means potentially reimagining the kitten heel; offering a higher heel than traditionally available at the brand; creating longer, linear toe-shapes, like a pointed almond, or melding the utilitarian elan with the demure. The goal is to incorporate elements of current trends while collaboratively forecasting and projecting designs that will provide a variety of “go-to” shoes for multiple looks.

“Again, being very disruptive, like stacking a basketball sneaker with a more lean and refined toe, so it feels a little bit more sleek so when you wear it with a trouser, or track pant and a blazer, it’s the perfect silhouette,” she said. “It’s almost like designing for a body type. I really looked at the different shapes and silhouettes of the shoes and thought, ‘If this was a curve on a woman’s body, would it be her best attribute?’

“For me, bridging fashion and function is super key, because what’s fashion if it doesn’t function?” she mused. “Comfort is like a birthright, it’s not a luxury. I want it to be authentic.”