After 17 years in music, Gwen Stefani has exploded onto the fashion scene as the It girl that eveybody want a peice of. So where did it all go right, asks Jane Bussmann.
Gwen Stefani arrives at the shoot dressed as the second half of her trademark contradiction: MGM starlet meets punk. She’s wearing her own label, Lamb — va-va-voom sweater, jeans that look sewn on — with a bare face and wet hair. It’s hard to square this with the photographs that are regularly splashed across the fashion press: she always looks too perfect to be real.
Stefani does a good line in perfection, which is why this is her moment. At 35, she has graduated from much-fancied face of the punky ska band No Doubt to star of American Vogue’s cover and the front rows of fashion week. She is bringing out a solo album and has landed a movie role — playing Jean Harlow opposite Leonardo DiCaprio in The Aviator, Martin Scorsese’s biopic of Howard Hughes. “I feel pretty lucky to be me,” she says.
In America, where the average pop icon is a 20-year-old Christian slapper, cooing about innocence while shoving a snake down her Wonderbra, Stefani’s kooky mix of tomboy cute and old-fashioned glamour, naughty kid and peroxide vamp, gives her a status no A-lister can match. Even in a cap, dirty-old-man trousers and rasta string vests, she looks photogenic where others look like a senile burglar. Thirtysomethings admire her. Teenage skate kids want to be her. The world of high style has repeatedly given her its seal of approval. In the icon stakes, Stefani can do no wrong. Not bad for a self-proclaimed geek from Anaheim, California’s answer to Milton Keynes.
Naturally, she doesn’t think of herself as an icon. Yet even without the slap, her face has the classic doll proportions of a Japanese manga cartoon: the giant, wide-spaced eyes, the snub nose, the cupid mouth. Surrounded by her posse — the stylist, make-up artist and hairdresser she credits with making her look this good; preparation for the shoot takes five hours — she is as excitable as a small girl at a slumber party. Who would guess that she and her band have been together for 17 years and sold 25m albums?
Compared with other pop figures, Stefani’s gift is innocence. Not for her the shotgun marriages (Britney), the reality-television series (Jessica Simpson), the desperate search for a saleable identity (Posh) or the celebrity victimhood (J.Lo). She plays the role of pin-up with skill: never photographed without the ivory foundation, scarlet lips and winged eyeliner, never snapped falling out of a club, wasted, at 4am. Courtney Love has compared her, in celebrity terms, to a high-school cheerleader, with Love as the delinquent student in the smoking shed. “My thing is looking groomed,” says Stefani, with a super-nice, Marilynesque coo.“I want to look like I walked out of a f***ing Jean Harlow movie.” So does Love — but Stefani’s actually good at it.
Love’s right about one thing: in rock’n’roll terms, Stefani is a goody-goody. She lived at home with her Irish-Italian, Catholic parents until she was 30. (“While I was looking for my mansion,” she protests.) “They were strict, but in a very loving way. I know it’s not cool to say, but everything was about us kids.” She slept with posters of Marilyn on the wall. “I was too shy to go on dates,” she says. “The only line I ever used was, ‘I have a boyfriend.’ I loved that excuse.” She still maintains she’s only ever had two boyfriends, her bandmate Tony Kanal and her husband, Gavin Rossdale, the lead singer of the British band Bush, with whom she lives in London for part of the year. “I have no experience to give love advice,” she says — although she may inadvertently have discovered the secret of looking 18 at the age of 35.
Stefani joined her brother’s band as a 17-year-old in pencil skirts, but they didn’t score a big hit until she was 26. “I wrote a few songs. Nobody was ever going to hear them,” she says. But they did. In 1996, Don’t Speak, written following her break-up with Kanal, went to No 1 around the world. That success doesn’t seem to have spoilt her. Every celebrity says this, of course — remember J.Lo’s Jenny from the Block? — but with Stefani, you believe that fame really is a by-product of her love of music and fashion, not the other way round.
Not that she hasn’t cashed in on her image. Her fashion label, Lamb (available at Harvey Nichols), has grown “from a pile of clothes on the kitchen table” to a brand that everybody digs. In an age of candy-coloured Vuitton, Stefani’s timing has been perfect, with cashmere argyle vests and cutesy lamb charm toggles. She knows how fashion works. When London was doing grunge, she was doing killer lips. When Britney was doing trailer trash, she was into Westwood gowns. “Gwen’s the iconic girl of the moment,” says Gela Nash, co-founder of the LA label Juicy Couture. “Definitely the It girl when it comes to anything to do with fashion and rock.”
Stefani’s rock kudos — hard won — is as solid as her fashion status. Her solo album boasts a roster of big-name collaborators, including the superproducer Pharrell Williams, the hip-hop king Jay-Z and Outkast’s Andre 3000. This is partly down to her ear for a tune, but they also know she’s the kind of girl who does things differently. In the Alice in Wonderland-inspired video for the first single, What You Waiting For?, she careers into an institute treating writer’s block in high heels and a bomber jacket, is assaulted by an Alessi rabbit and chased round a maze in skirtless Marie Antoinette outfits. “Nothing’s too cheesy, too gaudy, too much,” she says.
In 2002, Stefani married Rossdale, her boyfriend of five years. They made up for the long-distance dating with two weddings (“John Galliano made me a couture Christian Dior dress — it had to be worn twice”), and the California girl had a British hen night, with a brave finish “in tears in my front yard from drinking too much. Next morning, at the wedding shower, everybody was in sunglasses”. She is said to be “devastated” at the revelation — after this interview took place — that Rossdale is the father of 15-year-old Daisy Lowe, the daughter of Sadie Frost’s best friend, Pearl. Who knows how she really feels? What’s certain is that their marriage goes beyond the famosexual leanings of most celebrity couples. Low-key strolls on Primrose Hill and “family time” are the cool, modern take on celebrity coupling.
However, even cool, modern celebrities get the blues. “I got married, then went on tour for six, seven weeks and didn’t see Gavin,” she says. “It was so brutal. I kept hearing this stuff in my ears: I want a baby, I want to do a film, I’m gonna die. You suddenly realise you’ve done the same thing half your life.”
For now, though, she’s a part-time Brit and liking it. She has even dined with Madonna. “If it wasn’t for London, there wouldn’t have been No Doubt,” she says. “It’s the whole inspiration.” Although the tabloids have trailed her in the hope of a glossy, megawatt picture, she knows how to handle them: apply lipstick and keep smiling. “I know all the time that I’ll walk out the door and they’ll be there. But you can’t complain about it. That would be stupid.” And stupid she ain’t. She knows how to play the game. She knows how to act the good girl while dressing the rebel. “A rebel? Really?” she beams, then rolls her eyes. “Oh, look at me, that makes me so happy.”
She looks terrible. 
I thought I was the only one that had that opinion.
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