Effortless Style

by Richard Buskin, June Ambrose, Aimee Levy (Illustrator)

So you probably won't be attending your own movie premiere or collecting a Grammy Award this year. That doesn't mean you can't look like you're ready for the red carpet and fawning paparazzi. In Effortless Style, June Ambrose, the celebrity fashion stylist and designer who's shaped the looks of some of the biggest names in entertainment -- including Jay-Z, Missy Elliott, Kelly Ripa, and Mariah Carey -- reveals the industry secrets that can help anyone exude genuine star power, regardless of body type or budget. The key to looking and feeling like a celebrity lies in defining your own unique style and adapting it to each situation. The result is a look as natural as a second skin. In clear step-by-step instructions, Ambrose shows how people can improve the way they present themselves to the world, whether it's for a first date or an important meeting, and in turn boost their overall mood and self-confidence. Using examples from her work molding celebrities' images, she teaches women (and their men) how to define and enhance their look, with chapters devoted to topics such as knowing what clothes work for each body type, how to accessorize like a star, the importance of tailoring clothes so that an off-the-rack suit fits like a custom-made Armani, and much more. She offers tricks of the trade -- from choosing the perfect lingerie to handling bad hair days -- and provides a welcome list of wardrobe essentials and perennial fashion don'ts. With this must-have style guide every woman, whether girl next door or top executive, will be able to unleash her inner VIP -- effortlessly.

165 pages, Kindle Edition

First published May 11, 2010

About the author

A New York Times bestselling author, Richard Buskin is also a full-time freelance journalist, specializing in pop culture, music, film, television, and sociopolitical affairs. Since the early-Eighties, he has conducted interviews and written regular feature articles for a wide variety of publications in the US, the UK, France, Germany, Japan and Australia, dealing with all aspects of the entertainment business: the artistic, the technical and the entrepreneurial.

A native of London, England, who relocated to America in 1995, Richard has had his work published in newspapers ranging from the New York Post and the Sydney Morning Herald to Britain's Observer, Independent and Daily Mail, as well as magazines such as Playboy (US, Brazilian, Czech, French, Japanese and Polish editions), Stern (Germany) and Paris Match (France). He has also written for numerous music publications around the world, including Billboard, Spin, Musician, Mix, Musik Express, Melody Maker, Sound On Sound and Performance (for which he was a senior editor and UK bureau chief), and movie journals such as Film Review and Films & Filming, in addition to authoring/co-authoring more than 20 non-fiction books.

Among these are Inside Tracks: A First-Hand History of Popular Music from the World's Greatest Record Producers and Engineers (Avon Books, 1999); Blonde Heat: The Sizzling Screen Career of Marilyn Monroe (Billboard Books, 2001); Sheryl Crow: No Fool to This Game (Billboard Books, 2002); Phyllis Diller´s autobiography, Like a Lampshade in a Whorehouse: My Life in Comedy (Penguin/Tarcher, 2005); Effortless Style with celebrity fashion stylist June Ambrose (Simon & Schuster, 2006); Dream in Color: How the Sánchez Sisters are Making History in Congress with Congresswomen Linda and Loretta Sánchez (Grand Central, 2008); Die Trying: One Man's Quest to Conquer the Seven Summits with mountaineer Bo Parfet (Amacom, 2009); One from the Hart with actress Stefanie Powers (uncredited, Simon & Schuster, 2010); It's Not Really About the Hair with Tabatha Coffey, star of Bravo's hit TV reality show Tabatha's Salon Takeover (HarperCollins, 2011); Whitney Houston: The Voice, The Music, The Inspiration with musician/producer Narada Michael Walden (Insight Editions, 2012); and Classic Tracks: The Real Stories Behind 68 Seminal Recordings (Sample Magic, 2012). A co-author and consulting editor on the Billboard Illustrated Encyclopedia of Music (2003) and the Definitive Illustrated Encyclopedia of Rock (Flame Tree, 2006), Richard is presently involved in the planning and writing of several new books.

Richard Buskin has provided sleeve notes for records and videos; penned narrative material for DVD; written press releases and publicity bios for the likes of Aerosmith and Michael Jackson; served as a researcher and on-screen entertainment expert for television networks in the US and the UK; lectured journalism students at Chicago’s Northwestern University, as well as PACE program students at National-Louis University; and been interviewed on numerous TV and radio shows, including CBS's Entertainment Tonight, A&E's Biography, E! Entertainment's True Hollywood Story, AMC's Backstory and the BBC Television News. He lives in Chicago.