Few mix it up like style queen Gwen Stefani. But unlike most pretenders to her throne, she’s not too precious to share her secrets. Respect.

We get a shock when Gwen Stefani walks into the room. That’s to be expected, of course,  from a peroxide bombshell rock goddess. But today, as she saunters in from the 11 o’clock sunshine to the industrial cool of an LA photo studio, we’re taken aback because she’s so, well, under-stated.

Dressed almost head to toe in her own label L.A.M.B (Mukluk-style boots being the only concession), a beanie covers her trademark hair, over-sized shades shield her face and, despite the bomber jacket, she looks daintier than her larger-than-life stage presence – kinda doll like, which is really rather appropriate for a girl with such a penchant for dressing up.

‘This is my everyday outfit,’ she says. ‘These jackets are wicked, the lining’s camouflage with little lambs – I call it Lambi Cami.’ Gwen’s got a way with words – just read the lyrics, or cute sleeve notes, on her debut solo album Love. Angel. Music. Baby (L.A.M.B, geddit?). And as she laughs and chatters her way through our interview so enthusiastically that it’s a struggle to actually get a word in, it’s clear that not only has she got plenty to crow about, but that she’s toe-wigglingly happy with life right now.

First single What You Waiting For?, produced by studio svengali Nelle Hooper of Madonna and Björk fame, went to top 10 and follow-up Rich Girl, featuring Eve and produced by Dr. Dre, is destroying the charts right now. Elsewhere on the album, Gwen has collaborated with with other big-hitters such as The Neptunes and Andre 3000 from OutKast. She’s just won a Brit Award for International Female Solo Artist and is still very much at the forefront of No Doubt, with whom she’s sold 25 million records and won three Grammys.

Then there’s L.A.M.B, the clothing label she started two years ago with friend Andrea Lieberman. Right now Gwen’s working on an accessories line. ‘It’s Japanese-inspired, kind of Hello Kitty but older,’ she says. ‘It’s so cute. I even designed this digital camera with its own bag, stationary and all this Harajuku stuff.’

Last year she landed her first film role, in Matin Scorsese’s The Aviator, alongside Leo DiCaprio, after missing out on Chicago, Fight Club and Girl, Interrupted. It’s a back-row-snog-and-you’ll-miss-it part, but the first step on the last leg of Gwen’s bid for world domination, plus she got to play her heroine, Jean Harlow. ‘She was dope-ass, with skinny eyebrows and attitude – way ahead of her time.’

Meanwhile, Gwen splits her downtime between two continents, with homes in Los Angeles and Primrose Hill, London, where she lives with husband Gavin Rossdale from Bush, with whom she’s currently planning to have a family. So all in all, it’s something of a miracle she still finds time to be a fashion icon and inspiration to ELLEgirls everywhere.

So Gwen, first of all, can we just say that we’re loving your style?
Well, I love ELLEgirl too – I am an ELLEgirl. But I find it so surreal that people look up to me, because I’m just me, you know.

It’s because you’re so original. Where do you get your inspiration from?
I don’t really feel I’m original, I’m just a big collaboration of stolen goods. I’m inspired by everything around me, like I could look at somebody in the street and go, ‘OK, I’m doing that.’ I’m the biggest thief ever, it’s a big recycling thing. Over the years I’ve been inspired by tons of things – punk rock, Hollywood glamour girls, the ska scene, and I just put it into a big salad and mix it up. I was going to call my album Stolen Goods, or This Was Yours, Now It’s Mine.

But the way you mix stuff together it always works…
Thank you, that’s nice.

How do you get it right every time?
I don’t think I do! I guess I just have a passion for fashion… I love it. But it’s such a wierd thing to talk about – that’s why I never did it in the past, I’d always be so embarassed. Fashion’s just what you wear in the morning, you know.

When did you become conscious of it?
I hit puberty and found music, and all of a sudden I wanted to be unique. In high school I did a lot of sewing and thrift-store shopping. My mum sewed a lot of clothes for me when I was growing up, so I spent loads of time at the fabric store. Every dance that came up, we would buy fabric and make my dress. For prom, I remade Grace Kelly’s dress from the movie Rear Window. My parents were strict, though. If I was walking to college, they’d drive by and say, ‘You’re not going to school like that!’ Now I don’t wear anything that anyone tells me to wear.

Which designers inspire you?
Vivienne Westwood drives me crazy. She is the ultimate because she started the whole punk thing – so many people have copied her that she’s the book that you go to. She takes classical tradition and twists it modern. Every time I come to London I give her most of my pay check.

Do you have a stylist?
I’ve always done my own until I met Andrea Lieberman on the Let Me Blow Ya Mind video in 2001. We’ve been working together ever since and now she’s one of my best friends. She knows the fashion world a lot better than me – I’m just a girl from Orange County who goes thrift-store shopping.

We’ve got to ask – is Orange County anything like the O.C.?
Not the one I grew up in! My family lived across the street from Disneyland surrounded by a bunch of seedy motels.

How would you describe your album?
Well it was supposed to be a silly dance record, kinda like the songs I used to listen to in high school. I wanted to make a modern version of early 80s stuff like Club Nouveau, Lisa Lisa & Cult Jam, Prince, early Madonna… But when you’re writing you never know what you’re going to get, depending on your moods and what you’re going through at the time.

Like, the Harajuku Girls, for example?
I’m really inspired by the whole Tokyo scene. The first time I went, it was as if I’d landed on another planet – I was, like, ‘Are you kidding me?’ Harajuku Girls are all about being an individual and expressing yourself through style and that’s something I’ve always done. And then I started thinking, ‘I’m giving myself some Harajuku Girls and I’m going to roll with them everywhere I go.’ It was like a fantasy, almost like my muse.

You collaborated with a lot of people – what did you enjoy most?
The last session with Pharrell (Williams) was really fun becuase I already had the album done and was feeling confident. We got there at four in the afternoon and finished the song by 11. We were, ‘Wow, this is so fun.’ There was a magical thing going through us at that point.

We’re very jealous of you spending time with Pharrell in a small room…
I’m jealous of myself, I’m like – wow!

Did you learn anything about yourself from working with all these people?
That I have a massive ego. Songwriting defines me and makes me feel like I am something in this world, so to open myself up to other people was totally threatening. It was so nerve-wrecking, sitting in a room with Andre 3000, going, ‘Shit, I hope I can think of something – anything!’ But doing that fueled some fire in me.

How do you find time to do everything?
I have this big list of things I want to do and a clock ticking really hard in my head. I knew that if I didn’t do the album then, I’d never do the movie, the No Doubt record would never come out… It’s where the idea for the first single came from, like, ‘What You Waiting For, Gwen? Don’t complain about it – just go do it.’

Gwen on the couch

If you could be an accessory, what would you be?
Maybe I’d be a bra. Something sexy…

What excites you?
Following through with my ideas.

What would you do if you could be invisible?
I feel that I’ve been a fly on the wall for years, being in a band with all boys, so I’d much prefer to be visible: ‘Hello? Pay attention to me!’

How do you cheer yourself up if you’re having a bad day?
Eat pizza or Pringles, or just go to sleep… move on to the next day. That’s not very inspirational, is it? Now all you ELLEgirls will be, ‘We’ve got an excuse to go to bed.’

When are you happiest?
When I’m in bed, watching TV with my husband – eating pizza!

Do you have a recurring dream?
My dog Megan just died but she keeps coming back in my dreams so I suppose that’s God’s way of letting me still hang out with her.

Favourite smell?
Right now it’s a candle called Violet.

Do you have a massive wardrobe?
It’s obscene as I get all the L.A.M.B samples. Every so often I invite all of my friends over to pillage.

What do you always have on you?
My wedding ring, that’s going to be on me for life, and a toothbrush as I never know how long I’m going to be away. Then just my Blackberry, some sunglasses and lipstick.

Best invention?
I love the internet. To connect with the outside world without having to go out is really unbelievable.

Do you have a nickname?
Gwennie? But usually it’s just Gwen or Lamb, as I call everybody Lamb.

How do you spend your free time?
I’m usually really depressed, going, ‘I don’t know what to do with myself.’ I fantasise about going on vactation with my husband, that’d be weird. We’ve never done that before…

Name one thing you’d like to change about the world?
That there was no racism. It seems such an easy thing to get rid of.

What do you wish you could do that you can’t?
Choreography – I wish I could dance like Beyoncé or Michael Jackson.

Favourite journey?
This whole life’s been a long journey, but a good one. I don’t want it to end.

Her cutting-edge evolving style inspires fashion trends everywhere. Here, Gwen Stefani speaks candidly about her evolution from offbeat rocker to chic sophisticate, her introduction to couture and why John Galliano made her cry. By Phoebe Eaton.

Her eyes cast toward heaven in one of her trademark blessed-virgin-in-ecstasy poses, Gwen Stefani is feeling secretly jet-laggy as she mambos through Harper Bazaar’s photoshoot, where three security guards are on hand to monitor the glistening piles of jewelry that – these days – Gwen’s retrosexual looks seem to demand.

Her hair is definitely platinum, her eyelashes comb-ably thick and her mouth painted a subtle, meet-the-parents pink. As she dances to her first solo album, Love. Angel. Music. Baby, No Doubt’s 35-year-old lead singer-songwriter shows she still has those wicked washboard abs and hard-won tummy dimples that Pilates instructors like to refer to as Apollo’s belt.

Away from the camera, Gwen reverts to a delicate and vulnerable Fay Wray in the leathery palm of an upstairs couch. Hot coffee and Kleenex to dab away the sniffles are produced, and a man-mountain of a bodyguard (Gwen’s very own) lurks nearby. Gwen wastes no time kicking off her ’70s-style suede rock-chick mules so she can wiggle those gunmetal-gray-painted toes.

There is little chance to take a load off recently. “I’ve feel like I’ve been running and running for the past two years,” says Gwen. “But if I get excited about something and the passion comes over me then I can’t stop myself.” Growing up in Anaheim – whistling distance from Disneyland – Gwen was something of a tomboy, whose parents always helped their kids whip up some prize-winning Halloween costumes. Her father worked in marketing for Yamaha, but none of his four children was allowed to own a motorcycle. He did take Gwen to one of her first concerts: Emmylou Harris at the Palomino club.

Her mother and grandmother always sewed their own clothes, and it wasn’t long before Gwen was stitching her own midriff-grazing, suspender-dangling stage wear out of bras, balloon pants and kilts. Going to all those industry award shows at the beginning was a lot like getting ready for Halloween, Gwen once said, and there was something Kabuki about that early crop dusting of face powder, those ballpoint eyebrows and the gash of red lipstick. (She admits lipstick is the one thing she’d pack for a desert island – with a toothbrush and toothpaste.)

Why all the trowel-applied makeup? Gwen hired her first makeup artist in the ’90s, “and I thought, He is so-o-o-o talented,” she says with a musical giggle. (Even in the course of regular conversation, Gwen has a talent for holding a note.) “I was like, ‘This is great! Put on more!‘ ”

It was high camp, but it worked for her, as did the henna and bindis, the rhinestone-studded bra straps, the pizza-guy undershirts with camouflage boy pants and that black headband. Just like Madonna, Gwen has a talent for keeping her fans guessing. And just like Madonna, Gwen was determined to emerge from the chrysalis of her 20s as a fashion icon.

Right now, Gwen is genuinely engaged in L.A.M.B, her edgy clothing line stacked with wacky-waistline pants, Old English-lettered sweaters and va-va-va-vintage-looking halter tops and dresses. But it’s true there has been something of a glorious transformation. That can perhaps be traced to Gwen’s yen for the kind of longevity that making movies can only provide. “But, just to get a part, it’s so competitive, it’s crazy,” she says. Still it never hurts to dress for the job you want. Gwen credits stylist Andrea Lieberman, who collaborates on L.A.M.B, for escorting her through the looking glass to the loot to be had on the Paris, London and Milan runways. At last year’s Golden Globes, Gwen’s street style gave way to a vintage Valentino gown, and there would be more magic red-carpet rides in her future: Cast as Jean Harlow in The Aviator, Gwen Swans through an onscreen film premiere as if she had been born wearing diamonds, white satin and Leonardo DiCaprio on her arm.

But even as she got busy selling 26 million albums worldwide with No Doubt, Gwen battled her body. “If I had my laptop, I’d show you pictures of me in eighth grade,” she says. “That’s the fattest I ever was.”

Yoga didn’t do it for her: “I’m old school,” Gwen says. “I like to run around and sweat, jump rope, run three or four times a week. Before our greatest hits tour last summer, I started weights again. By the end, I got so buff, I thought I was a man!”

And now she’s even more buff than ever. One guesses her recent investment in the latest elliptical trainer – “Whooo-ooo! That thing is hot!” she says – is partly responsible. People are fixated on her incredible shrinking waistline and how they might replicate the feat, but Gwen says she’s tired of indulging the chatter: “I wish everyone would just shut up about it, but I understand why people want to know, because half of my conversations are about working out. You talk about it with your friends all day long.”

Fashion has also been propelled to preoccupation now that Gwen has more of a bank account to speak of. In her latest single, “Rich Girl,” Gwen fantasizes about cleaning out a Westwood boutique in her Galliano gown. The David LaChapelle-directed pirate-themed video was inspired by a Vivienne Westwood ad from the 80s. “I am a Vivienne Westwood maniac!” Gwen says. “She is so magic!”

Gwen remains big on the Westwood bustier, but it was Dior designer John Galliano who was drafted to create Gwen’s cream and pink wedding gown and her 2001 and 2002 Grammy dresses. She has called Galliano her muse and notes that they are both exercise obsessives. “John has a hot body,” Gwen observes admiringly. The first couture show she ever went to was Galliano’s. “I cried,” she remembers.

Someone at the shoot suggests that the music be turned to something upbeat “so Gwen won’t get depressed.”

“I am not depressed!” she insists. Because of what appeared in recent papers, it’s easy to assume that Gwen is feeling slightly peaked. In October, tabloids snitched that Gwen’s husband of two years, Gavin Rossdale of the grunge band Bush, had fathered a daughter (now a teenage model) before he met Gwen. London gurgled that Rossdale had always denied any dalliance with the child’s mother, which is why Gwen is now believed to be, quote unquote, devastated. There were even rumors that the Gavin-Gwen merger was in trouble.

Gwen’s eyes drift when the subject of Rossdale comes up: “Anything you’ve read about Gavin is not true. I don’t even like to talk about him because I’ve gotten in so much trouble mentioning him in my interviews. Our marriage is so sacred that the idea of sharing it with the world, and people judging it, is just gross.”

“They are dealing with this between the two of them,” says a source close to the couple. “But it hasn’t ruined the relationship, ruined the marriage. Gwen and Gavin remain very, very committed.”

Once, after they had split up years ago, Gwen dyed her hair fuchsia. “because that’s what you do when you break up with someone,” she remembers, laughing. “I saw a poster of some ’50s girl with cotton candy-beautiful hair.” Instead, she ended up with a shade of flamingo she lived with for an entire year: Some fans had dyed their hair pink too, and she reasoned it would have been cruel to turn up at concerts with her old meringue hairdo.

“I look at it [now], and I go ‘uccch,’ ” she says softly, “but it so perfectly reflects exactly where I was, which was very unsure of myself. But if I you read the lyrics of that record [Return of Saturn, released in 2000], they are some of the best I’ve written in my life!”

Rossdale remains a constant inspiration. Gwen is always pillaging his closet, and it was he who turned her on to Comme des Garçons and Yohji Yamamoto, “Gavin’s got really good taste,” she says. “I try to impress, so when I go out to buy something, I think, Will he like it?” she says, “because you want to look for good for the person you are hot for.”

Right now is the first time in a long while that Gwen doesn’t see her future. Gwen does want kids, and the backbeat of her debut solo single, “What You Waiting For?” is a ticking clock: “Your moment will run out ’cause of your sex chromosome,” the song chides.

Gwen allows that having children might help restore some perspective: “I always say that my children are going to save me from my vanity.” But there’s some fear of the unknown, too: “It’s just like being engaged or married. People can try to tell you what it’s going to be like, and you can watch movies, but until it happens to you… I think that’s kind of how it’s going to be with children.” With a house on the West Coast, in Los Feliz, and one in London’s Primrose Hill – “I feel super-duper lucky to have both,” she says – there is now the necessary square footage in Gwen’s life. She considers this: “Having children is going to be my biggest collaboration ever.”

What a Year! The best (and worst) of 2004

Introducing Gwen Stefani as our chick of the year. By Parker Ray.

It’s hard to believe that this is Gwen Stefani’s first gay press interview – especially considering how much we queer boys love our stylish, ballsy, independent, hard-working, trendsetting, pop star blondes (real or dyed). So much so they can all be addressed by their first names: Madonna, Debbie, Britney, Christina, Kylie.

But there is a difference between the ladies above and Gwen. She nails it when she tells Instinct, “I don’t feel like I’m very controversial, I don’t want to upset people. I just want to make them feel good.”

That pretty much sums up why Gwen Stefani is our Chick Of The Year. Not only would we switch for her in a heartbeat – just name the time, place and what kind of wine we should bring – but she embodies the type of female that gay men should be adoring. She doesn’t stir up controversy because, really, what does that accomplish other than killing trees to print copies of Us Weekly and Star?

No, instead Gwen inspires – and she doesn’t need to get hitched in Vegas while drunk or expose herself ina coffee table book to get attention. She just works her butt off. And she can’t get enough of creative people or the creative process, and vice versa. Just look at her list of collaborators: The Neptunes, Moby, Andre 3000, Linda Perry, Eve, New Order – among others.

By having Gwen as the first chick to appear solo on our cover, Instinct is officially proclaiming her the queen of the next wave of gay icons. She has all the ingredients we love without any of that lame tabloid baggage. And, even though she swears a lot (which we totally dig), in the end she’s what we all wish we could be: Classy, successful and respected.

INSTINCT: Before we get started, I just want to say happy belated birthday. Did you get to do anything fun?
GWEN STEFANI: Thank you! I did. My husband had a little barbecue party for me. I hadn’t seen anyone because I was in London or wherever I was. [Chuckles] So they all came over and we ate lots of food and caught up with each other.

You have two big “firsts” coming up: Your first film role, in The Aviator, and your first solo album. Obviously, they’re two very different experiences. What was the most thrilling aspect of being in a film, especially one with Leonardo and directed by Martin Scorsese?
I’ve been wanting to do film for a long time. One of the big reasons I took time away from the band is, at the end of the Rock Steady Tour, it was almost like we were married to each other for 18 years and we never took any breaks. We kept going out of pure passion.

It seems perfect that you are playing Jean Harlow in The Aviator.
[Laughs] When I read who they wanted me to play, my stomach was on the floor – oh my god, Jean Harlow! [Laughs] Howard Hughes basically gave Harlow her first movie role and the scene that I’m in is when they go to the premiere of the film, Hell’s Angels, at the Mann Chinese Theatre. I thought it was kind of ironic that it was my first movie role and I was playing Jean at the premiere of her first film. It’s actually Herb Ritts’ fault that I got the part.

His fault? How’s that?!
Herb Ritts was the one that had done this photo shoot for Teen Vogue with me. It was his idea to do this Marilyn [Monroe] on the beach thing. I was just happy to finally be working with Herb. Martin Scorsese saw that cover on the side of a bus station and thought, Hey, let’s get that girl to try out.

Is this the type of movie role you were hoping for?
There is no small part in that film, but it was only; like, five days of work. It was really incredible to start off playing someone like Jean Harlow. I haven’t done much acting but I have a feeling that it is something that I would enjoy. Not that it can compare to playing for 20,000 people and getting that immediate reaction being on stage.

And with the new record, Love. Angel. Music. Baby, you get to explore your inner dance diva.
I had a specific record I wanted to make. But it snowballed and became this really hard, ego-busting project. The clock was ticking in my ears; I thought writing dance songs was going to be easy. You don’t have to think about anything, you just have to write, “Get on the dance floor and boogie.” I wasn’t looking to have a theme, just a guilty pleasures record.

Guilty pleasures. We like those. And because you’re, well, Gwen Stefani, you had quite the opportunity to work with a bunch of great producers.
I had a list of people I wanted to work with that I thought I could get a certain sound with. Linda Perry came up to me at the Grammys and I was so happy for her because I had known her for years. We were the first two girls signed to Interscope and I was happy for her success because I knew her journey. She’s a very aggressive girl. [Laughs] She came up to me and basically put me in a headlock. She gave me this intense look right into my eyes and she said, “We’ve got to write songs together!” I’m just kind of thinking, Dude you’re not Prince, you know? [Laughs] How are we going to write my dance record?

She did write that get-your-bootie-to-the-dancefloor song for Pink.
I was looking to work with people like Prince and Andre 3000. Robert Smith. Anyone that I liked back in high school.

But, come on, this is Linda Perry.
I didn’t know how talented she was. That some girl could run the board and has all this equipment, tons of guitars, drums, as massive studio, it was all very impressive for me. I’ve done this for half my life and I’ve never gone in and had girls who were able to run the board. We ended up the writing a song that first day called “Fine By You” which was basically: I don’t want to be inspired, I just want to be lazy, but whatever I want to do is fine by you and you like me still. I came back the in the next day and [Linda] didn’t even look at me when I walked in; she had been up all night and pressed play and this crazy maniac track came out. What the fuck? You did not just pull that shit out! It was almost like a dare. She’s, like, “Gwen, what the fuck you waiting for? You gotta do this shit now.” We looked at each other that dat and there was definitely electricity and you could tell it was all meant to be. It still bugs me that she wrote “What You Waiting For?” She wrote that line. Nobody fucking cares, I know. Nobody cares but me.

In that single you mention that this “dance” record you’re making is going to bring you “brand new fans.” As if you needed to make a dance record to get the gay boys to like you anymore…
[Laughs] You know, my hairdresser, who’s gay – go figure – he was, like, “There’s a category for gay guys?” Like you all like the same type of music. I knwo that isn’t true. I’m not stupid. I understand that there’s a whole club scene. Trust me. I’m surrounded by gay guys.

We guess it’s just that this solo project, especially since it’s more dancy, is going to bring even more gay guys to worship at the Altar of Gwen.
The one thing I’d like to mention: I feel really uncomfortable when people say I’m going solo because I feel this is definitely not somewhere I’m going. I feel like if I was going solo I would be leaving the band and not compromising and writing this whole record on my own and it would be pure Gwen. This is simply just me going, Fuck, I wouldn’t mind trying something different before I die.

That makes sense. Do you ever get a chance to make it out to queer clubs and check out all the hot, unavailable men?
[Laughs] I’ve been out a little bit in New York. It’s not like I make a conscious effort to go to gay clubs. It’s just that a lot of creative people that are around me just happen to be gay. This one time, up in San Francisco, we went to this one club one night and watched all these performances. I just love all the creativity and self-expression and I think that’s what attracts me to the scene.

It’s funny to have you on the same label as Eminem and a lot of other homophobic rappers. Plus, with regards to No Doubt, you have a lot of reggae and Dancehall influences, and both of those are rather homophobic.
I don’t really think twice [about hanging out with gay people], that’s why it’s weird. A friend of mine, he’s this talented and successful guy, and he told me this rapper didn’t want to work with him because he is gay. I was, like, “What?!” People would pay anything to work with him, so I was shocked. And the Dancehall/reggae community, I love that music so much, but to have a connection to that intolerance is really embarassing.

But Rufus Wainwright is now on Geffen, which is, I think, a subsidiary of Interscope.
I know Rufus. My head designer at L.A.M.B, Zaldy, and Danilo (who does Gwen’s hair), they’re all friends with Rufus. Sophie Muller, a good friend, she filmed Rufus’ video [for "April Fool's"] at my house. He’s sweet. I emailed him a few times and he called me wanting to do something together, but I was already 20 songs into my record.

Have you ever fallen for a gay guy?
I’ve had dreams where I was making out with Danilo, he’s so handsome. If my husband went missing I would definitely ask Danilo to fill in. [Laughs] he’s a great friend, though. But no, I’ve been smart never falling for a gay guy because you’ll only get your heart broken. right?

Some girls never learn that.
[Laughs heartily] Your funny. *Some* girls…

So L.A.M.B just launched this past spring. That’s what, like, 20 gigs you have going now? Singer, songwriter, actress, designer, babe…
[Laughs] That last one is the the toughest one! Clothes are something I’ve done my whole life. I’ve been sewing my clothes since high school. My stylist, Andrea Lieberman, she’s the New York super way cool Jewish version of me. I’m from Orange County so I don’t know that much about high fashion. Andrea opened my eyes to that whole world. When I started I was, like, I can’t do it. Sitting in front of piles of faux fur trying to make decisions. It’s a full-time job that I’m trying to do as a part-time job. But I fucking love it so much, it fulfills me, it’s my passion, that I would die if someone took it away from me right now.

It’s all women’s clothes right now?
Yeah.

So we’re going to see a lot of drag queens wearing your stuff?
[Laughs] I hope so!

Okay. you’re in the spotlight a lot – so how have you avoided the scandal?
I think I’m a pretty good girl. I try to be a good girl. I don’t feel like I’m very controversial. I don’t want to upset people, I just want to make them feel good. At this point it’s all about sharing and hoping people get what I got out of this record. I made it for myself. I just want to share what I’m doing and if they get off on it, too, that makes me feel really good. I really, really wanted to make a record that was going to be played in the clubs, yet I have yet to hear it in any of the dance clubs. But I’m going to be going out a lot to see if I’m making people dance.

Okay, I’ll do my part to make sure the gay boys are shaking it to your songs.
You’re sweet! Thanks for talking to me, dude.

Equal parts punkette and starlet, gwen Stefani is about to go super-stellar. Scorsese’s new star and pop’s hottest hybrid, she’s far from just a girl, says Charlotte Sinclair. Photographs by Lorenzo Agius. Styled by Andrea Lieberman.

Gwen Stefani is half way through our cover shoot when there’s a security breach at the country house that’s serving as our location. While on a tour of the building, a group of blue-rinsed ladies stumble into the music room where Gwen is being photographed. If the peroxide blonde with flowers in her hairs stirs recognition in the octogenarians, it probably owes more to their memories of Forties starlets than any familiarity with the sexy, stylish, stiletto-wearing tomboy who fronts the Californian rock band No Doubt. Gwen is non-plussed, and smiles graciously, arching a perfectly penciled eyebrow at the group as they are ushered outside outside onto the lawn, their chorus of interest (‘Goodness, wasn’t she pretty?’ and ‘Who was that?’) drifting in through the open window as the shoot resumes. The renegade OAPs could be forgiven for their ignorance, but Gwen Stefani – whose currency as a bona fide rock chick, fashion icon and budding actress is already soaring – is about to hit the big time.

A few days previously, I was led into a closed room as St Martins Lane hotel to listen to exclusive tracks from Stefani’s new solo album, Love Angel Music Baby. The clandestine circumstances say much about her exalted status. With the kind of secrecy usually reserved for top-selling global artists such as U2 and Madonna, I was allowed only a supervised listening of three of Stefani’s new tracks, the words of which I had to frantically scribble down before the lyric sheets were snatched back at the end of the session. There was no question of taking the CD home. The album is her ’side project’ – her first record without the No Doubt boys (ex-boyfriend and bassist Tony Kanal, guitarist Tom Dumont, and drummer Adrian Young). As well as representing her solo debut, it marks her initiation into a more mainstream sound.

‘I had a very clear idea of the kind of record I wanted to make, as far as style and sound goes,’ says Stefani later. ‘I wanted to sound like Prince, Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam and Club Nouveau.’ But the change in direction is not a snub to No Doubt’s sound. ‘It’s not like, “Gi, I’m Gwen Stefani and this is me; these are my true feelings because I’ve been compromising all these years,” ‘ she says. ‘That was the true me the whole time.’ The songs, upbeat dance tracks with a strong Eighties influence and plenty of attitude, include her first single, ‘What You Waiting For?’, produced with Linda Perry (who has written songs for Christina Aguilera and Cortney Love), and ‘Bubble Pop Electric,’ a frenetic beat-filled track produced with Andre 3000 of OutKast. The Neptunes, Dr Dre and New Order are among other collaborators. Gwen’s voice switches from a tremulous vibrato reminiscent of Kate Bush in ‘Cool’, a wistful song about past love, to a throaty Debbie Harry growl for such lines as ‘I’m itching, wish you could come and scratch me’ in ‘Bubble Pop Electric’.

Stefani’s half-street, half-sweet image reveals the contradictions in her. With an English husband (36-year-old Gavin Rossdale of the rock band Bush), a Primrose Hill pad whose elegance equals her own, and wholesome moral principles, commited Catholic Stefani has a classic, ladylike appeal. But equally, she’s a down-and-dirty riot-grrrl from Anaheim, CA, who has spent the past 17 years playing with the boys and sporadically dying her hair blue. ‘Being a girl in a band,’ she explains, ‘means that I want to do my own hair and wear cute clothes – but, when I get on stage, I want to rock out.’

Gwen has garnered a solid fanbase with No Doubt (with whom she has sold more than 25 million records and won three Grammys), but this temporary break from the band, plus her designs for burgeoning clothing line L.A.M.B, and a small but potentially career-break acting role as Jean Harlow in Martin Scorsese’s The Aviator, mean that everyone is watching Stefani now. As Missy Elliot, with whom she performed at the 2004 Brit Awards, says: ‘When Gwen does this, it’s not going to be just another record; it’s going to be an event.’

However, if she’s feeling the pressure, it’s not showing. It’s a yawning, sleep-fogged Stefani who walks into the old manor-house for our shoot. Pushing open the huge oak doors into the Tudor hallway, wearing a white tracksuit and trainers, she says in her surprisingly little voice: ‘This place is ridiculous!’ ‘Ridiculous’ and ’sick’ (Californian teen patois for fabulous) are trademark Stefani words that, sprinkled into conversation along with ‘dude’, ‘crazy’, and ‘magic’, make her sound younger than her years. She is someone who is visually defined by her make-up – the indelible slash of red lipstick, the long black Cleopatra kohl line on her eyelids – so her bare face comes as a shock. She stands in the dim and dusty hall, her skin clear and almost translucent, and her face dominated by huge brown eyes. A sliver of her famous washboard stomach flashes at her waist as she pushes away a strand of white-blonde hair from her eyes. ‘She ruined her hair on tour with bleach and hair pieces,’ says her stylist and friend Andrea Lieberman. You’ve got to admire Stefani’s commitment to peroxide. She even dedicated a song to her ravaged locks on No Doubt’s last album (the dancehall-influenced outrageously catchy Rock Steady), called ‘Platinum Blonde Life’: ‘I want a platinum blonde life/So I keep bleaching out the color.’

Against the back drop of faded glamour, Gwen plays the imperious and errant lady of the manor for the camera. She sings along to one of her new tracks, ‘It’s My Shit’, standing on the lawn in a floor length silver sheath dress.’ ‘Damn,’ she shouts over herself. ‘This song doesn’t match my dress.’ Stefani plays her part with élan, at one point standing in a revealing silk basque, throwing her head back, her hand on her forehead in mock faint, as 16 spectators look on. ‘Oh my God!’ she yells cheerfully on seeing the Polaroid. ‘Dude, I look like a mannequin. I had to wear this dress yesterday that was so tight my kidneys were squashed to hell,’ she adds. ‘It was amazing.’

Gwen Stefani has been experiencing a renaissance over the past couple of years. At 34 years old, she has become the kind of celebrity whose presence in the front row of a show lends instant kudos to the designer; gossip columnists adore her. At a time when Chloë Sevigny and Sarah Jessica Parker are revered for their offbeat fashion sense and quirky looks, it’s no wonder that Gwen, who can carry off dancehall-inspired ragga wear and Louis Vuitton prom dresses with equal ease, has become a style leader. And all without losing a shred of musical credibility. A collaboration with Moby, the ghetto-fabulous parody ‘South Side’ brought her to a new dance audience in 2000. Moby said: ‘She’s incredibly technically proficient and just a really remarkable singer.’ And last year’s hit, ‘Let Me Blow Ya Mind’, produced with rapper Eve, gave her approval with the hip-hop crowd, and further cross-genre appeal. The Eve video, the first for which Stefani used a stylist (‘Before that I always did everything myself’), also launched her new look: a slicker, slimmer Gwen whose colourful style had been refined with ‘that bling R’n'B lustre’, according to Danny Eccleston of Q magazine.

Sitting in a dusty armchair in an attic room filled, appropriately with vintage costumes, Gwen Stefani is voluble, launching straight into the story of her album. ‘I’m just going to go for it, OK?’ She is refreshingly honest and artless throughout, readily admitting her insecurities in going solo. ‘I don’t really know why I’m doing this record, either,’ she says. ‘I’m just as scared as the fans are for me, and I have been uptight about the whole thing. But I just want to do it.’ Stefani also understands how exacting her standards are. She tells me about a quarrel with Linda Perry over a song they wrote called ‘Wonderful Life For Him’ about Stefani’s first high-school crush, who died a few years ago. ‘I wasn’t finding the right way to say it, and Linda wrote these lyrics and it was the last straw. I was PMS-ing and just wanted to break out in tears,’ she says, shaking her head. ‘So I left and didn;t go back. But months later when I listened to the song again, it was beautiful – so I ended up recording it.’ She smiles, contritely spreading her hands.

A highly ambitious perfectionist, last year she launched herself into a punishing, itinerant recording schedule. ‘I wanted to take time off to get inspired but I was really feeling the clock. The ongoing joke between me and my husband,’ she says, rolling her eyes, ‘is that we went on vacation to the South of France when I got off the Tragic Kingdom tour. That was seven years ago. And there was our five-day honeymoon, which was the only other vacation we’ve ever had.’ And what of Rossdale? The pair met on a No doubt tour in 1995, when Stefani was 25. After a somewhat shaky courtship (during one break-up, Stefani famously dyed her hair pink, cut a fringe and got braces on her teeth), they married in 2002, once in St Paul’s Church in Covent Garden (‘by a Church of England vicar who was Gavin’s religious-studies teacher’) and once in LA; Gwen wore a John Galliano dress at both ceremonies. ‘It’s great to be married,’ said Gavin at the time. ‘It makes us feel our love is a lot deeper.’ I ask her how she copes with having a long-distance relationship. ‘For years, we were apart, which I think is a great thing when you’re creative people. Anything more than three weeks is really screwed up, and causes problems. But we know that it’s not going to be like this for ever,’ she says. ‘I think marriage goes in spurts. Sometimes you just can’t take it anymore and then, all of a sudden, you’re in love like you just met again.’ Babies are high on Gwen’s list, although when she will find the time is another matter. Fans have expressed concern about whether the couple will have enough time to devote to raising a child. ‘We’re just as worried about it as they are.’ says Stefani. ‘But it’ll happen when it happens.’

Stefani was born in 1969, into a musical family; her childhood memories are of her parents playing Bob Dylan and folk records. In 1986, she was asked to sing with her brother Eric and friend John Spence’s band, No Doubt. When Tony Kanal joined, he and Gwen started dating – he even took her to her senior prom. ‘My mom remade Grace Kelly’s dress from Rear Window for me to wear,’ she says. She has been with the band ever since. (‘I’ve been famous since I was 17 – I could go into Tower Records and be recognised,’ she says proudly, giggling.) But the band nearly collapsed when Spence committed suicide, and Eric departed. It was then that Gwen found her voice as a songwriter; in 1995 the band produced their hit album Tragic Kingdom, which sold more than 16 million copies. ‘Before, I was this Gwen, the little sister or girlfriend, and I was satisfied with that. I thought I could never have any kind of effect on anyone. Then I learnt I could write songs – I realised I had a talent and a power.’

This creative period also coincided with her break-up with Kanal. ‘Suddenly, I was this independent person who was happy and didn’t have to depend on my lover. Before that, I never really had anything of my own.’ The two have remained friends; the lament that resulted from the experience was the No Doubt hit ‘Don’t Speak’. Gwen really can write. Some of her lyrics are beautiful – for example, the phrase ‘Born to blossom and bloom to perish’ in Beauty Contest’. And with references to Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes and Janis Joplin on No Doubt’s second album, Return of Saturn, Stefani proved herself to be anything but the dumb blonde.

It was the video for ‘Don’t Speak’, in which Gwen is seen moaning plaintively into a microphone, swaying barefoot in a blue polka-dot dress, that kicked off her reputation as a style leader. ‘I got that dress at a thrift store, five years before we shot the video,’ she says. ‘It smelled so bad that I never wore it. It’s a beautiful fabric, that really old rayon that just hangs beautifully.’ Her knowledge of how a fabric hangs is genuine. ‘It’s in my blood. My grandma made all my mom’s clothes, and my great-grandmother always sewed. Then, all through high school, and in the band, I made my own clothes,’ she says. ‘I used to make corset-style drop-waist dresses with a cheerleader skirt. Underneath I wore my boxer shorts, fishnets and Dr Martens. For years, though, I never wanted to talk about my style because I was more concerned with music.’ However, she now confesses that ‘the visuals on this record are as important as the music.’ She now understands the importance of image innately. ‘I had a very clear idea of how I wanted to look, and I prepared for it.’ She relates the story of her first ‘fashion moment’ with the gusto of a true addict. ‘I bought a Vivienne Westwood corset for $800 – with my own money – and wore it in a video. Then I got to meet her, which was like meeting the Queen. I was just like, “Aarrgh!” ‘

Stefani’s style aesthetic serves as a welcome foil tot he homogeneous Britney look predominant in the music industry. Gone is the unpolished grunge look; in its place is subtle overstatement with lots of colour. Knuckleduster rings and hound’s-tooth check culottes mix with McQueen gowns. Her body is taut and muscular, all traces of the ‘chubby child who had to join the swim team’ erased. ‘I’ve always had to work at it. I have a trainer, and when I’m at home I work out five days a week.’ Standing in a Dior dress with built in hips and a bustle, she says: ‘What was the point of all that dieting? On tour, we all went nuts. We were training all day and by the end of it I was like, “Damn!” I didn’t even recognise my own body. I just wanted to do the show naked.’ And does she feel the pressure to stay thin? ‘Beauty Contest’ has the lyrics: ‘How’d my vanity get such a mess/Reduce myself, I’ve got the strict restrictions.’ Gwen sighs. ‘Even if I wasn’t famous, I’d still feel the pressure because I think we all do.’

Doubtless, she forgives John Galliano for the extra Dior-enhanced curves. Her relationship with him is prolific, and culminated recently in Gwen wearing Dior in the video of No Doubt’s cover of Talk Talk’s ‘It’s My Life’, directed by David LaChapelle. ‘I got invited to my first Christian Dior show, and I cried,’ she says, slipping into ditsy LA speak. ‘I could not believe that someone made that look up.’ The respect is mutual. Galliano says: ‘She has a great energy. I love her personal style – she carries it off with such aplomb.’ Gwen leans forward conspiratorially in her chair. ‘I had John over to dinner the other night. It’s so weird; he was describing the whole couture show that he had just done and then today I’m wearing the dress!’

I ask Gwen if the white angora sweater she’s wearing is Westwood. ‘No, it’s one of my fall pieces. I think it’s gorgeous.’ She’s talking about L.A.M.B (which stands for Love, Angel, Music, Baby), the name of her fledging clothing and accessories line – as well as that of her new album – and yet another feature in her cap. Stefani clearly thrives on multitasking. Her design partner, LeSportsac’s CEO Tim Shifter, had his first encounter with Stefani at a Dior catwalk show. ‘Flashbulbs went off and the paparazzi started going crazy. At that moment I really understood what star she has. She is creative, full of ideas, and really has a sense of what her fans want.’ For Gwen, it is a far more selfish endeavor. ‘I’m not trying to impress anyone except for myself. I sit there and say, “What do I want to wear?” Then I make it.’ She giggles, as if she can’t believe her luck. L.A.M.B bestsellers include her punk-inspired bags with metallic zips. More than a mere vanity project, her bags are selling well. ‘For a while, I thought, “Why am I doing this? I just don’t have the time.” But Andrea helped me, and I’m going to keep getting good at it because I want to do it for ever. I’m not going to be dancing around for the rest of my life.’

An awareness of the limited longevity of the female of the female rock star could explain Stefani’s interest in film roles. ‘I’ve never acted but I always wanted to. I’ve tried out for films before [including Fight Club, Chicago and Girl, Interuppted], which is humiliating but fun.’ Having harboured a fascination with the Forties actress Jean Harlow for years, Gwen was ‘on the floor’ when Martin Scorsese sent her the script for The Aviator. ‘I was like, “You’re fucking kidding me!” ‘ she yells. Scorsese had seen Herb Ritts’ photographs of Gwen styled as Harlow, and asked her to come and meet him, ‘and dress like a lady’. The part only involved a couple of lines, but she auditioned in front of Scorsese and Leonardo Di Caprio, who plays Howard Hughes. Not bad for a debut. ‘I must have been there for about an hour, talking about the band and everything, and then they called, and I got it.’ Stefani considers it an auspicious start. ‘In the movie, Hughes gives Harlow her first role, in Hells Angels, so for me it’s like Scorsese giving me my first role… And it’s Jean Harlow, which is just so frickin’ weird,’ she laughs, shaking her head.

Stefani’s father, Dennis, in town on business, turns up to wait for his daughter to finish the shoot. As soon as he arrives, Gwen, standing the grounds in a transparent chiffon Lacroix skirt, starts to act the little girl. ‘I forgot to put my skirt on Daddy, don’t look,’ she shrieks. Between shots, she pleads with him not to read the gossip about her on the internet. ‘They even say I’ve had a boob job,’ she says, looking at her flat chest in horror. ‘You mustn’t read it Daddy.’ Theirs is a close relationship, and he appears quietly protective of her, despite her age. ‘I feel very stable because of my Catholic upbringing,’ Gwen has said. I ask Stefani Snr if his daughter has always been a star. ‘No, she’s always been regular. She never dressed sexy as a teen, not like Christina Aguilera. She had a ska tomboy look,’ he says. ‘She only got style when she started getting famous.’ He smiles, proving that celebrities have embarrassing parents.

For now, Stefani is happy – creatively fulfilled and settled in her marriage. She has even befriended fellow Londoner Madonna, although she doesn’t necessarily see her self as the same kind of feminist role model. ‘I always respected girls who were tough and could stand on their own. But I was making a stand. I was just a normal girl who didn’t know what was going to happen next; the normal one, over there, with the fat butt,’ she laughs loudly, pointing to an imaginary, plumper Gwen in the corner. The self-deprecation is difficult to accept from someone so assured. It’s far easier to believe the sass and ego of her lyrics in ‘What You Waiting For?’: ‘Look at your watch now/You’re still a super-hot female/You got your million-dollar contract/And they’re all waiting for your hot track/What you waiting for?’ Gwen’s face splits into a scarlet smile as she hears her own words. A super hot female? ‘Dude, you’d better believe it.’

Thanks to a radical hip hop reinvention and a series of credible creative hook-ups, Gwen Stefani has emerged in recent times as a major music player. Now, on the eve of her solo launch, the iconic blonde talks about boys, girls, celluloid dreams and making “a little dance record of her own”. Pop goes the superstar!

Somewhere within Gwen Stefani there must be an element of sadness, dourly gestating, imprisoned, waiting to break free. Not that you’d know it from the woman herself. You won’t get so much as a breath of negativity from eight straight hours in her company. Spending time with Gwen is like mainlining a curious, buoyant cocktail of Sunny D and liquid seratonin; it’s as if helium has magically found it’s way into the air-conditioning. She oozes essence of zesty, goofball, feelgood California. She’s got a succession of quickfire, cheerful punchlines beamed straight in from The OC script office on some delirious repeat edit and raises an iconic eyebrow by way of saucy punctuation for each one. If I had a dollar bill for every time I heard the word ‘dude’ coming from her big, smiley, slasher Hollywood mouth, I’d most probably have a couple of hundred bucks by the day’s end.

Everyone’s jaw drops when Gwen enters the room, but she magnanimously deflects this awed reception, partly by running around on vertiginous, clip-clop Westwood heels, showering ‘hello’ kisses all round by way of introducing herself – as if she needs to – and partly by ‘yo, duding’ anyone that will listen. Which is mostly everyone. She breezes into the photographers studio at 12:30pm. By 5 o’clock in the afternoon I figure that the whole room has fallen in love with her. Not bad, given that half of them are women, gay or variants of both.

When God was dishing out the good looks, it is fair to say that Gwen Stefani was somewhere near the front of the queue (she skipped the semester when he was alloting angst). She bagged the bright, starry eyes, the Jessica Rabbit waistline, the stretch-to-infinity legs, the neat, cherubic and suddenly explosive pout and added her own bleach later to blend into a perfectly fitting state of white blonde.

Thus, the camera loves her. And, boy, can she work it. Whether paddling down the backstreets of Kentish Town, stopping traffic by flashing her Dior Couture hooped underskirt, handing out balloons to local kids with whom she is causing an evident stir – at any given point she draws an audience of somewhere between ten and thirty gobsmacked onlookers from nowhere – or reclining on her back in the middle of a busy road, she seems preternaturally hotwired to stardom. “Loving your work, Gwen,” shouts some itinerant laddo from an open window. Is he referring to her records? Or the fact that she has just strutted starrily down his street, mostly in her underwear? It’s never quite established. But Gwen’s an expert at this game. She plays it right back to him. “Loving yours, too” she says, blowing the lucky chap a kiss.

Later she will says that this is her work, that “I want to be at the centre of something incredible.” She can play the loveable ditz better than anyone you’d care to imagine. But underneath it all, one suspects, is a steely determination to turn her brand into something approaching legend. The eve of her solo launch for world domination – or as she, somewhat disingenuously put it “just making a fun little dance record of my own” – is a fascinating moment to watch Stefani. Gwen, you see, is that oddest of breeds. She is a joyful celebrity. She appears to have been born to it. If only they cut all of them from this mould.

What was little Gwen like?
I was always, um, a little… [dithers a while, stirring soya milk and honey into her tea]

Was she going to be a superstar?
No! Dude! The only fantasy I ever had about that was after I was already in the band. When I was in High School I thought that a really cool job would be to sing jingles. I do physically like singing. I thought I could do it. So that was where my ambition was at. I thought ‘dude, you can sing. Hey, you could do Kentucky Fried Chicken commercials.’ That sounded like fun.

Before she acquired the illusive status of being famous for simply being Gwen Stefani, Gwen was famous for fronting No Doubt, an unusual, ska-inflected poprock operation. I had always, wrongly assumed No Doubt to be named with a knowing wink to the obviousness of their English musical heritage, a nod to the whole ska thing. In fact, the explanation seems far more literal. It is because they, and their startling front woman, appear to have no doubt. Even in their fallow periods, No Doubt have exuded a unique and singular, can-do confidence. I’ll be honest, the first time I heard tell of the group I winced. Then I saw them and gasped. They looked like they’d been assembled by an angry marketing meeting of chunky, godless businessmen clutching phallic cigars and mopping sweat from their thickset brows with fancy Hermes hankies in a Bel Air production office. The foxy chick and the almost Bennetton-ad racial assortment of backup dudes. Mohawks, skaters, punks, babes, Ragga, pop, rock, ska, even a short sharp brace of metal and the odd hip hop inflection. This cacophony was surely dreamed up to appeal on every level, at every single junction of the record-buying demographic. It was as if ’80s MTV had imagined the group into life, willed them into being.

Yet for two partially flunking albums – their self-titled debut in 1992 and Beacon Street Collection in ‘95 – they managed to keep only heads above water. LA college kids with piercings and Acupuncture bootees kept them just about in business. There were tours with The Red Hot Chili Peppers and Ziggy Marley, but still Gwen would only get stopped while shopping at Tower Records on Sunset Strip and asked about the band. She was approaching huge in her native LA, a bona fide sensation in Anaheim – unbelievably appropriately, CA’s feeder town for Disneyworld that was her childhood home. But in most of the speaking world she couldn’t get arrested. Then came along Don’t Speak, the first of two monumental, turnaround, upward swings in the imperial curve of being Gwen Stefani.

Gwen was 26 when Don’t Speak gave her her first international smash nine years ago. She toured its parent album Tragic Kingdom in support to the then-huge Bush, where she met her husband their handsome, English rake of a singer, Gavin Rossdale. If for a while they had appeared to be wipe-clean, parent friendly Kurt and Courtney, her inflating success bubble put Gwen in the bridesmaid’s role of a direct run of iconic pop blonds from the previous two decades. Exactly where Courtney always threatened yet never quite managed to be. Debbie Harry was approaching 30 and three albums old when she first cut through to circuit-dominating pop supremacy. Madonna – that other Catholic, Italian-American bleached pop goddess that Stefani is so often compared with – was 27 by the time of Holiday. It is suggested to Gwen that the ’70s gave us Harry, the ’80s Madonna, and the ’90s Gwen. She looks aghast.

“That’s crazy, dude. That’s crazy. Don’t even say that shit. Listen, I’m having a freaking fun time and I love what I do but to even talk about me in the same breath, you know?” Three days before we meet, Gwen had been to see Madonna on the London leg of her career-defining Reinvention tour. “It was amazing. It was actually quite embarrassing how close I was to her. It was so fun. people were so happy. I was so elated. I haven’t been to a concert like that in years.”

Beneath the wonder, there is a serious consideration here, as to how far Gwen can go. If Gwen is gently cautious about voicing it, Madonna herself, ever a champion of the young bucks biting at her ankles, spotted it. They have socialised together. “She’s been really nice. It’s something not a lot of people know about Madonna – how supportive she is to other female artists.” Gwen has a theory on their connection: “My mom’s Irish/Scottish and my dad’s pure Italian, but his dad came from Rome to Detroit, so I tease Madonna that me and her are related. Because my grandma’s sister’s husband is Ciccone. But I don’t think so. Maybe.” The thought is clearly a thrill, however far-fetched.

Twelve million copies of Tragic Kingdom, and its follow-up Return of Saturn later, a brace of Grammies collected, and the second pivotal moment in the making of a modern icon occurred. Gwen had been experimenting with solo vocal work, already, and had bagged an American smash with Moby on the single Southside. But it was her duet with crop-headed Dr Dre prodigy, rapper and impecunious scion of all things street Eve on Let Me Blow Your Mind that upped Stefani’s ante into being something other than a pretty frontwoman of the American record industry’s favourite globe-trotters.

Did she feel the shift? “Aha! Sure I did. Just like everybody else did. I am under no illusions that the record turned me around. being able to rock into Eve’s world and get lost in all that coolness. I mean, I dreamt of Dre. He’s always been on my label and I always dropped things to people that knew him, like, ‘dude, if you ever want me to do any vocal thing, anything. I’ll do it’. So I got the call about the Eve track, but I didn’t have much to do with that track. I went in. He beat up my vocal, I left and I remember I was really liking walking into another, completely different world. But it turned out so incredible and it was such an incredible thing to be part of. It really opened our world up to all these other people. We had a whole opportunity out there of people that would work with us. It was awesome. That’s how I met Andrea, too.”

Andrea is a crucial figure in the Gwen operation. They share a closeness amongst singers and their stylists probably only rivalled in the celebrity cannon by Kylie and her creative directing shoulder, William Baker. Andrea, a Bronx girl by both nature and nurture also looks after Jennifer Lopez – it was she that selected the olive green heavy print, Versace/tit tape Oscar ensemble that was to redefine red carpet attire forever – but Gwen is more than her client.

“She’s my girlfriend first,” says Andrea, “I love working with her and hanging out withe her.” Gwen puts it even more succinctly “She’s the East Coast me,” she declares. Their bond was instant and thus their working synchronicity was nailed instantly too. A fashion plate was beginning to weld itself onto the public conscious. Stefani became eternally prefaced in print by the seldom scientifically or precisely used words ’style icon’. And she earned the plaudit with glowing ribbons.

By her own admission, coolness is not Gwen’s forte. She blanches when I ask her to rate how cool she is on a sliding scale of one to ten. “No way. That is so mean. I could never do that. I just don’t think like that.” Nevertheless, she has become a benchmark for the scintillating ambitions of the coolerati since her seismic shift. No Doubt’s first and, thus far only post-Eve album, the most perfect pop/rock configuration Rock Steady, attracted a new elite into the fold. Nellee Hooper, William Orbit and Sly & Robbie joined in the production credits. Just to prove the band itself was one step ahead of the fashion curve, they invited Ric Ocasek, frontman of The Cars and new wave renaissance man par excellence, out of retirement to harness a couple of moodier rock moments. The result was astounding. If Don’t Speak had been both blight and blessing for No Doubt – who really wants to be a one-hit wonder, however wondrous the one hit? – Rock Steady established them as one of the late-blooming giants of the world stage, both commercially and creatively. It was their belated tipping point moment. They achieved heat.

By the time it’s come to a full blown solo foray, everyone wants a piece of Gwen. The cast list of collaborators on her debut is dizzying. Andre 3000, Wendy & Lisa, Pharrell, New Order, Linda Perry, Dr Dre, Dallas Austin and long-time No Doubt co-writer and one-time boyfriend Tony Kanal are all along for the ride. Outside of her currently enviable musical predicament – Stefani’s solo album is the most hotly anticipated of the season, and not without reason: it’s dynamite – she has been directed by Martin Scorsese in the Howard Hughes biopic The Aviator, opposite Leonardo DiCaprio. Her and Andrea’s fashion line, L.A.M.B, is finally reaching its full potential (“Look at my cardigan,” says Gwen, showing off a piece of her own work “it looks like camouflage, but look closer. It’s lambouflage”). Multi-tasking is in Gwen’s DNA. She is rocking so hard now, a free-wheeling boulder couldn’t interrupt her progress. Thus her opening gambit as we sit down to talk properly comes as something of a surprise…

Do I smell? I’m so sorry. I mean, I have all this crap on me and I’ve not showered and I’ve been running around and, um, I’d stay away from me if I was you.

You smell fine.
Just stay over there dude.

Honestly, there’s nothing! Why do the solo thing now? Is this it for No Doubt? Has it run its course?
People for years have always been saying ‘oh, she’ll go solo.’ Listen, I am not going anywhere. My fears are the same as any No Doubt fan’s fears. I really do not want to fuck that up. I’ve been doing No Doubt for 17 years now. I talked to Tony about it and said I didn’t want to threaten anybody or anyone’s situation here, but I wanted to try something else. He was really into it. They were all supercool about it. I already said that I wanted to make a family… oops. I wanted to make a movie, and I did want to make a family, too, by the way. All these things that I wanted to do and, lets face it, I’m on time check here. They understand that. It’s different for them because they’re guys so they’re all cool. I was thinking if I don’t get this thing done now then when’s the No Doubt record going to get done? When am I going to have a baby? Fricking hell, this clock is going quicksville.

It’s a pop record, right? A proper pop record?
Sure. Me and Tony come from totally different backgrounds, musically, to Adrian and Tom. They’re really into punk and heavy metal and ska and Tony and I didn’t really listen to that stuff when we were growing up. We listened to all the ’80s stuff. When I met Tony I was 17. He turned me onto Prince, The Family, Time, Club Nouveau, Debbie Deb, Lisa Lisa, all that stuff that was totally a huge part of our childhood. Early Madonna really figures here. White Lines. I had all that shit, and even though you didn’t necessarily admit it, it was a totally huge part of our musical upbringing. It felt right to go there again, Cyndi Lauper, Duran Duran. I graduated Sixth Grade in ‘87, you know?

Have you only ever had two boyfriends in your life?
Yes, I had one boyfriend in high school who was my kissing boyfriend who I was completely in love with. We went out for six months. The thing about him that’s weird to talk about is that he actually died. Recently, you know. Just two years ago. I didn’t know him for years, though I actually wrote a song for him on this record called Wonderful Life. He was one of those guys that was the naughty, naughty boy who had total character but was always getting into trouble. He was in and out of high school all the time.

So the boy that all the girls wanted to date?
Yeah. One time he was back in high school and he just turned into Robert Smith overnight, which I obviously found very attractive. I was obsessed with him for years, then he broke up with me. It wasn’t like… It was Ninth Grade, he was the second boy I kissed. But Tony was my real boyfriend for eight years. We broke up then I met my husband and we’ve known each other for almost nine years.

What attracted you to Gavin?
Probably physical stuff, you know. It was very physical to start with.

What were your initial impressions?
We got to meet the guys and we went into the room and all I’d ever heard was ‘Gavin this’ and ‘Gavin that’ and I saw this guy and it just hi me like something out of the blue. I was like ‘whooo!’ He is shockingly handsome. We went out for dinner last night and I was thinking ‘gee, you are hot’ and then I thought ‘and I’m married to you! Whoa!’ It’s really good. Then he was on tour with us and it was kinda weird. All my band are my friends and none of them wanted me to go out with him. He had a little reputation for being the typical rock star guy.

But he’s a nice boy?
He’s an amazing person. He’s such a nice guy. Obviously, I wouldn’t have gone out with him if he wasn’t.

There was a little rock’n'roll mythologising around him though?
Sure. I mean, probably some of that shit was true but he was a guy like anyone is. It’s not like you’re born a rock star.

Why do all these people want to work with you now?
Linda Perry had come up to me. She approached me, which is wild. She came up to me at the Grammys and put me in a headlock. We were the first girls to sign to Interscope, so I’ve kinda known her for years and we were always drawn to each other.

Is she not a little scary?
She is, dude! She was right up in my face telling me ‘we’re gonna write songs together’. She totally confronted me about working together and she’s the hottest hit maker. You have to remember that I’ve never worked with a woman before and this girl can play any instrument she picks up, she can run the board, she produces, she writes, this is the coolest, most awesome person to be around. She’s on fricking fire from the moment we walk into the studio. My ego was already curled up and in the corner by the time she’s pounding out these tunes but it just clicked. There were times during the process of doing this that I hated myself because whoever I was sitting next to was so incredible.

Are you aware when you’re in the presence of genius?
To be able to sit next to Andre 3000 and see how he writes lyrics and comes up with shit is amazing, let me tell you. For me coming in as a fan, it can be horrifying.

Aren’t you aware that those people are fans of yours too? That’s why they’re there?
Everybody that I’ve worked with seems to be really into it, which is very flattering. I can’t believe it. I didn’t want to put something out unless it was incredible. I said that from the beginning and at any point I could have just pulled it.

Jean Harlow, lets talk…
I just saw it in New York. I saw my clips. It’s sick.

What was Scorsese like?
Magical.

Not frightening?
The exact opposite. I was obviously scared out of my mid, but he’s the most welcoming, comforting kind of guy. Almost to the point where you think ‘have you got to make me feel this nice – haven’t you got a film to direct here? He basically saw my picture from a Teen Vogue shoot on the side of a bus stop by Herb Ritts. It’s all Herb’s fault! I’d done the whole Marilyn on the beach kinda thing and Martin saw it and asked me to try out for the Jean Harlow part and I tried out and got it. The thing that’s crazy about this… I mean, it’s a small part but I’m not calling it a small part. I’m with Leonardo DiCaprio, directed by Martin Scorsese, playing Jean Harlow. I can be on screen for, like, one second and that is not a small part. That is huge, dude.

Are you pleased with it?
Oh boy, am I?

Is this the first time you’ve acted?
Yep. You know what’s crazy about it is I’m playing Jean Harlow just after Howard Hughes has given her her first major movie role, right? And I thank Howard for giving me this amazing part. So I sent Marty some flowers when he cast me with the exact same words on it. It’s kinda symbiotic, you know?

How many people will you be thanking in your first Oscar speech?
Dude, the list will be endless…

One last thing. How happy are you right now?
Ecstatic, basically.

A fashion label. A music career. A so-gorgeous husband. Welcome to Gwen Stefani’s world.

Picture this: You’re Gwen Stefani. You front No Doubt, one of the coolest rock bands in the world, and the guys in the group are so close they’re practically your family. You married Bush lead singer Gavin Rossdale in a heavenly dipped-in-pink dress. You’ve launched a fashion label called LAMB that celebs are loving and you’re about to star in the Martin Scorsese film The Aviator. Can life get any better? Um, not really…

You’re known as a style icon. How did that happen?
When people started talking about how I dressed in the early days, I was always dismissive of it. If you’re in a band, it’s really uncool to talk about what you’re wearing. You just wear it. It’s [meant to be all] about the music, but obviously that’s not true. I do make a effort and I’ve always loved clothes.My mum loved clothes too and I think it’s in my blood. Every Christmas, my great-grandma would sew pyjamas, quilts and clothes for everyone in the family. I’d go to her house and her whole back room was full of fabrics. She would start on New Year’s Day and work all year long. My grandma made all my mum’s clothes. My mum didn’t even get a say in the matter. She’d come home and her mum would say, “Here’s your prom dress.” Then my mum made all my clothes. We’d go to the fabric store, look through the books and choose the patterns, the buttons and the zips. I love clothes and fashion – it’s an extension of my personality. It really isn’t important in life, but it’s fun.

Did you always love unusual clothes, rather than chain-store fashion?
I’ve always loved shopping and making my own outfits. When I was young and Mum said, “Let’s go to the mall”, I always replied, “Can’t I just go to the thrift store? You get really good stuff there.” I would buy the clothes and then alter everything on our sewing machine. My bedroom was always the one you didn’t go into – unless you wanted to get pins stuck in your foot. I was always doing projects and making my own clothes.

Have you always been close to your family?
My family is really tight. When the band started, everyone would come over to our house and Mum would drive them around. The Stefani’s were like the Brady Bunch. The day I got my nose pierced, we were playing a local show and my mum drove me there. We’re really close.

When No Doubt started, you were only a teenager. Did you make your own clothes then?
I’ve always made my own clothes. When we first went on tour, I sat around and made three outfits; they were Disneyland-cartoonish dresses. Then I got lucky, made more money and hooked up with a girl who made clothes for me. I could just call her, tell her what I wanted and she’d send me different fabric samples. So I’d be on tour and could ask for polka-dot pants in yellow and a top with black stripes. When you’re on tour, you don’t have time to buy clothes. Then I met Andrea Lieberman, a stylist who is so cool. She streamlined my ideas and improved them. I was blown away.

You have your own fashion line now, LAMB. How is that?
To be here talking about it is beyond me. I didn’t know what I was doing, but it was so much fun. I got inspiration from designers, stole ideas from everyone, and then thought, “What do I want to wear?” I started making clothes and doing drawings. I had so many things going on; it became so overwhelming. I thought, “I can’t believe I’ve done this, what a mistake,” but by then it was done. It was a distraction from my music, but I’m only trying to please myself really.

Lots of stars just give their names to a clothing line. Are you involved with design or do other do most of the work?
I’m involved. I could easily go out and make tons of money cashing in – trying to do something my fans could afford at Target – but I’m not really interested in that. I’m passionate about designing and find it very artistic. I want to do it for real and make a brand that’s going to last. I want something that well be there for my 15-year-old daughter. I love it so much that if it got taken away, I’d be so sad. I want to cry just talking about it.

You do some mainstream fashion, making LeSportsac bags. How did that happen?
They asked me to be a guest designer and I thought, “Why not?” I remember them from when I was a kid. When the bags came out it was weird. I’d see a girl across the street, owning her bag, but it was my bag, you know what I mean? It’s a bit of a jealous feeling but it’s magical that people like my bags and clothes. One thing that saves me from that jealousy is that I have them the season before.

What skills do you need to be a designer?
The whole collection, of course, is just ripping off everyone else. That’s what I’ve done my whole life in music, style, everything. I don’t care who you are, it’s all about stealing and borrowing from everyone and making it your own.

Who’s your favourite designer?
One would be John Galliano. I can’t even believe I know him. Vivienne Westwood is another. The first fashion show I went to was hers. Talk about stealing ideas. I don’t know where she stole hers from but her clothes are so wearable.

Why did you call your clothing line LAMB?
Lamb was the name I used to call my dog. Her real name was Marilyn – after Marilyn Monroe – because she had blonde hair, but it developed into Lamb because, for the past few years of her life, she always followed me everywhere, like Mary’s little lamb. I then started calling anything cute “lamb” and named the clothes after my dog who passed away.

Do you call Gavin “Lamb”?
Hmm, interesting. No. Lamb has taken on a whole new meaning with the clothes, so it doesn’t mean what it used to.

Do you have any indulgences when it comes to clothes?
When I go to London I splurge on Vivienne’s clothes and come home with bags full of them. I’ll buy whatever I can because I love her clothes and they fit me really well. She’s spectacular.

Are there any similarities between creating a garment and writing a song?
It’s the same feeling. You write a song for yourself, from your heart. I don’t sit there thinking. “What kind of song can I write for my fans?” I write my song and then it goes out there and people embrace it as the backdrop to their life.

What does the upcoming solo album mean for No Doubt?
We’re taking a break but we’re definitely not breaking up. I wanted to make an ’80s dance record with fake drumbeats, kinda like Salt-N-Pepa, and I couldn’t do that with No Doubt. I haven’t finished it yet.

What do you think of the constant comparisons to Marilyn Monroe, Jean Harlow and Madonna? Are they annoying or flattering?
It’s crazy but it’s not annoying. It’s amazing to be playing Jean Harlow in this new film The Aviator [which also stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Cate Blanchett. It's bizzare that I get to play the original blonde bombshell. She comes on the screen and she's a light bulb. Growing up in LA, I became really fascinated with starlets. My whole room was filled with Marilyn Monroe posters and I loved old musicals and early Hollywood. It was such a glamorous era. Madonna came out when I was at school and I was into other types of music. And admitting I liked a pop idol was not something I did very often. It wasn't until later that I really started to appreciate what an incredibly talented person she is.

Do you and Gavin hang out with Madonna and Guy in London?
Yeah. We've had dinner together and she's great. I like London. I get lots of attention and better tables in restaurants. I was talking to Madonna and she says she prefers her life in London because she feels more free. I know what she means, [In London] I get to have a break and have family time with Gavin.

Do you think you’ll get an English accent?
No. If I ever sound English, slap me.

Is your body natural or the result of grueling work-outs?
You want me to talk about my hot body? Before anyone has any ideas about me, I’d like to say that I have to work very hard to look as good as I do. I work out every day but wearing cute clothes is good inspiration. So if I want to eat pizza. I do. But if I want to wear cute clothes, I don’t.

Are you on a permanent diet?
I go through waves with food. I’m probably like everyone else. If something cool is coming up and I want to look good, I get into my healthy fitness rage and take care of myself. As soon as it’s over, it’s like “Hooray, let’s go get pizza.” I do whatever I want, I become a lazy slob and watch TV. Then I get motivated again. It’s the same old cycle and it’s the same for everybody I know.

Your busy with music, movies and the fashion thing. How do you find time to be with Gavin?
I make sure it’s a number-one priority. Everything else is second. Sometimes I have to say no to things because I want to be home with him and hang out. Relationships are work, like everyone says. You have to put the time in, but so far it’s been really fun work. He’s so talented, he’s good at everything and he’s an amazing cook – so I really scored. We have a great time together. I love being married. But I don’t have advice for anyone on relationships. If you read any of my lyrics you’ll see that! I’m finding my way like everyone else.

You talked about making clothes for your daughter. Are you planning to have children?
I hope so, sometime in the future. I do think about babies and kids. We really want them but at the moment we’re enjoying the marriage and being together without children. My life has turned out nothing like I thought it would. Things have kind of evolved. I believe there is a plan for me and it will happen.

Glamorous Gwen Stefani has become the ultimate music icon with that rare thing – a good reputation. Now, as Jonathon Van Meter discovers, she’s setting her sights on Hollywood. Photographed by Steven Meisel

Gwen Stefani’s house in Los Feliz has a vaguely spooky quality to it. The unease I feel when I pull up in front may simply be the result of my having watched Sunset Boulevard one too many times. Or perhaps the damp January chill has something to do with it. In any case, when the high gates swing open, I walk up the curving, rain-slicked driveway. I am greeted at the heavy wooden door by Stefani’s assistant, Pete, an affable young English fellow who is a childhood friend of Stefani’s husband, Gavin Rossdale.

The house was built in the twenties, and Stefani is only its fourth occupant, which is one reason many of its original details remain unaltered. The rotunda-like entry, for example, is dominated by a dramatic spiral staircase (worthy of Norma Desmond herself) with a complicated wrought-iron railing featuring a replica of a Spanish galleon. On the domed ceiling above, there’s a large fresco of once-famous conquistadors. Pete leads me through a dining room lined with dark paintings and bloodred walls, a medieval chandelier hanging over a long wooden table, and deposits me in an enormous kitchen that has been remodeled to look as if it were designed in the twenties—a sea of black and green ceramic tile bathed in warm, low light. There are candles flickering and religious iconography here and there. It’s as if Stefani’s entire home is a kind of Gothy take on old Hollywood.

While I wait for the lady of the house, I look at framed family photographs in one corner. There is a picture of Stefani as Jean Harlow, taken on the set of The Aviator, Martin Scorsese’s forthcoming Howard Hughes biopic starring Leonardo DiCaprio. Though she utters only a few lines in a movie-premiere scene, a cameo in a Scorsese film on Leo’s arm is certainly not the worst way to announce that she is ready for her close-up.

When Stefani appears in the kitchen moments later, her sunny presence throws the Dark Shadows aspect of her house into high relief. As she opens a bottle of Chardonnay, I ask about the photograph. At first she says that it’s the actual Jean Harlow, and even though a moment before I had thought it was Stefani, I fall for it because she does not look the least bit like the rock star we’ve come to know and love. “I’m kidding,” she says. “It’s me!” She seems pleased that I was willing to believe it might be Harlow. “That’s the key, right?” she says. As I lean in to look at the photograph again, she complains about her makeup. “I would have done it a little differently,” she says. “I’m always in control of my hair and makeup. I was like, ‘Are you sure you want the lips to be that thin? Jean Harlow’s were bigger than that. It’s not like I didn’t read two biographies and watch eighteen of her movies before I got here.’ But what are you going to do? They were in control. I couldn’t say anything. It was hard.”

The makeup artist must have been a nervous wreck. Is there anyone in popular culture today who is as identified with her makeup as Gwen Stefani? The powdered, pale skin, the scarlet lips, those high, arched brows. She has a very particular, almost dated relationship to “putting on her face.” She even wrote a song about it a few years back (“If the magic’s in the makeup/Then who am I?”). It’s so rare to see her out of makeup that when she appeared in a recent video jumping on a bed with a naked face, looking just pretty, she was almost unrecognizable. The image appears to be an homage to those famous shots of a natural Marilyn Monroe, another icon who always had her face on in public and on whom Stefani has been fixated since she was a teenager. “My whole room was Marilyn Monroe posters,” she says.

Today Stefani’s wearing a sleeveless T-shirt with wide red, green, and yellow stripes, and a pair of complicated new Levi’s jeans, worn low and long. Lacy underthings peek out from the top of her jeans. On her feet: sweat socks and Adidas flip-flops. Around her neck is a diamond choker that spells out WIFE in Gothic, diamond-encrusted lettering—a gift from Rossdale. Her white-white hair is a marvel of structural engineering, pulled back tight on the sides and piled high up on her head in a kind of squared-off, simulated Mohawk. Like so much of Stefani’s style, the do manages to simultaneously evoke forties Hollywood and early-eighties SoCal punk. It’s quite a trick.

Stefani has just gotten home from an audition for Brian De Palma, the director who’s partly responsible for making it seem as if something creepy lurks behind every gate in Hollywood. His latest project will do nothing to dispel that notion. He is casting The Black Dahlia, a film based on the James Ellroy novel, which is itself based on the true story of a young Hollywood starlet’s gruesome murder in 1947 (her body was found cut in half and disemboweled). Josh Hartnett and Mark Wahlberg have already been cast in the film as two detectives. Stefani tells me that this afternoon she had to read with “some young guy named Josh,” not seeming to know who he is. She can sometimes verge on ditzy, but, to be fair, this could just be a sign that she’s still sort of a stranger to the film world. “It was really humiliating and nerve-racking, but I feel like I did pretty well,” she says. “But I don’t know whether I would ever even do it if they offered it to me because it’s a kind of a racy part.” She amends her last thought slightly: “I know I’m not going to get it, because I think the character is so the opposite of me. She’s really dark and naughty and slutty. And she has black hair.” This is the first glimpse I get of Stefani’s self-image, which, despite her tough-girl stage persona, is surprisingly wholesome, if not prim.

Stefani claims she had never considered acting until she became famous as the lead singer of No Doubt and agents started calling. After she came off of touring for the band’s breakthrough album, Tragic Kingdom, in 1997, she settled on David Schiff from United Talent Agency. “All I ever do is go to parties with him,” she says. “I never do movies.” Spoken like a true Hollywood starlet.

At least he’s getting her through the right doors. The last film she auditioned for was Mr. & Mrs. Smith. “It was between me and Angelina Jolie, and I’m like, ‘Oh, great. I got a shot here.’ ” But then, she says, “the whole acting thing really feels like something I could do. Whenever I’ve done it, whenever I had moments where it works, it’s just like performing. You hit a moment. And that’s what movies are: a series of moments.”

Now we are sitting in her living room, whose artifacts speak to the curious mix of interests in her life, from haute couture to Hollywood history, from reggae to rock ‘n’ roll. The room is dominated by two plain white sofas and a dark-wood baby grand piano. Above the mantel is a huge black-and-white framed photograph of Bob Marley. Next to it is a red neon heart inside a Plexiglas box, a gift from Gwen to Gavin. Nearby are John Galliano’s framed sketches of her wedding gown. And there, in the corner, are Stefani’s two Grammys, to which she can now add a third, which she won in February for “Underneath It All,” a sweetly demanding little song she wrote about Rossdale before they were married. Lying on the coffee table are stacks of art books, including Icons & Idols, Great Hollywood Movies, and a book of Marilyn Monroe photographs.

At the moment, Stefani is curled up on one of her white sofas sipping a glass of wine. Right behind her head is a series of very glamorous Herb Ritts photographs of her and her husband, propped up in frames and lined up in a row on the piano. The images are, in fact, so glamorous that it’s tempting to want to place Stefani in the pantheon with Monroe and Harlow. “Isn’t it weird how there are icons like that?” she says. “Like Jean Harlow. They screened her movie Hell’s Angels for us. She was really bad in it, really awkward. But she’s so magical. She comes on the screen and you’re like, ‘When is she coming back?’ She’s just like this lightbulb. And it’s so obvious that she’s huge.”

Stefani could just as well be describing herself. Sophie Muller, who has directed seven of No Doubt’s videos, says she has “no idea” whether the singer’s prodigious screen presence in music videos will translate to film. “The difference between actors and singers who are great at videos,” she says, “is that they’re great at being themselves, but an even better, prettier, larger-than-life version of themselves. Actors are often people who don’t really know who they are and really love becoming somebody else.” Muller and Stefani first met nine years ago as they prepared to shoot the now classic “Don’t Speak” video. “She came to my hotel room and I just remember that she was all sparkly,” says Muller. “She had diamonds under her eyes and she looked incredibly glamorous. I just knew that she was a big star. You could see that right away.”

At 34, Gwen Stefani can sometimes seem much younger. She still talks in the patois of a teenager, beginning sentences with “Dude!” more often than not. Eight years ago, I briefly interviewed a 26-year-old Stefani over the phone. I had been writing a story about women in rock, and just as I was finishing a draft, I saw a video on MTV by a band I’d never heard of. The song was “Just a Girl.” Aside from the fact that the lyrics spoke directly to my point, I was thunderstruck by this new? person. She was clearly a post-Madonna, ironic blonde; she spent a lot of time in the video pouting and batting her eyelashes but had rock-hard abs, was dressed half like a boy and half like a cheerleader, and stomped around like a bad-ass rocker chick. I thought: I have to talk to her.

Despite the song’s defiant lyrics – “I’ve had it up to here” is the last line, though it’s sung in a cutesy, Betty Boop voice – Stefani claimed at the time to have no idea that it would resonate with feminists and tough grrrls.”The scene that I grew up in,” she said, “with female artists like Bikini Kill and Hole and all these more punk-rock girls, I always had the pressure of ‘You’ve got to be a feminist and you’ve got to hate guys. And you’ve got to cuss and be tough.’ And I was never like that. I grew up, like, a Catholic good girl. Total Brady Bunch family. That always kind of scared me, the pressure of having to be so cool or like, fuck you to the world. But I kind of got over that and realized that, yes, I love to dress up and I love to wear makeup and be myself. I like being a girl; I like having a door opened for me; I like all that traditional stuff and I won’t deny it.”

Nothing has changed since then. As Andrea Lieberman, a stylist who has been working with Stefani for the last couple of years, says, “Gwen is the girliest girl I know. She’s like a giant heart wrapped in a diamond-studded bow.” Stefani’s girlishness seems to be the direct result of the fact that she has lived in the protective bubble first of her family, then of her band.

Stefani was born on October 3, 1969, to high-school sweethearts. Her father, Dennis, who is Italian, worked in research and marketing for Yamaha motorcycles, and her mother, Patti, who is of Irish and Scottish extraction, was a homemaker. Stefani has an older brother and a younger sister and brother who all live in Los Angeles and remain very close. “I was very spoiled compared with a lot of people,” she says. “We weren’t rich, but we definitely had whatever we wanted.” The Stefani household was also very musical. “My parents were into Bob Dylan and were huge lovers of folk music.” Stefani distinctly remembers being taken out of Girl Scouts to go see Emmylou Harris perform at a local theater. Her parents took her to see movies and musicals, including The Sound of Music, which, as she likes to say, “changed my life.” Then there were the inevitable cast albums for Evita and Annie, which she would sing along to. “I don’t have a singer-singer’s voice,” she says. “I know what my voice is. But I knew that, physically, it felt really good.”

As it happened, her father may have been the first to really recognize that her loopy, unpredictable voice was actually rather surprising. “I remember giving my dad a demo tape of a song I wrote called ‘End It on This,’” she says, “and he would listen to it on the way to work and he played it for people. I remember two things he said to me. One was ‘Everybody’s saying that your songwriting is really good and you should just keep going.’ And the other was ‘Don’t ever take lessons, because your voice is really unique. There’s just something about it.’”

Even No Doubt was a family affair. Founded by Stefani’s brother Eric and his friend John Spence in 1986 as a ska band, No Doubt had very humble beginnings. Gwen was invited by her brother to be the co-lead singer; shortly thereafter the bass player, Tony Kanal, joined the band and they began playing small local venues. A year later, Spence committed suicide, and Gwen stepped into the spotlight. She also became the girlfriend of Kanal, a relationship that lasted seven years and whose breakup she has painstakingly detailed in several songs (most famously in “Don’t Speak”). “I was very passive,” she says. “My brother did everything. I was like, ‘I’m just the sister.’ And then after that I was ‘Tony’s girlfriend.’ And that was good enough for me! I never really had any ambitions or goals or dreams.”

When Stefani’s grandmother died, everyone in the band but Gwen and Kanal moved into her house, and it became known as the Band House, cementing the notion that No Doubt was a family. “I look back on the band, our little family, and how we made it into one. We had a lot of rules that we made up. The band was always number one.”

The group slowly and steadily gathered a sizable and very loyal following in Southern California—but there was no game plan. “We never thought we were going anywhere, really; we just wanted to see the next show. It was just a really homemade little fun thing we did literally in our garage.” Their big break came in 1990, when No Doubt got signed by Jimmy Iovine to his then-fledgling Interscope Records. “Jimmy took me aside and said, ‘Gwen, you are going to be a huge star in six years.’ I was like, ‘First of all, who the hell are you?’ And second of all, ‘I’m not going to be in this band six years from now. I’m going to be having fourteen children and be married.’ Then, practically to the day, ‘Don’t Speak’ was number one around the world. It’s pretty spooky. We always laugh about that.”

In 1995, No Doubt went on tour in support of their second album, Tragic Kingdom. Stefani dropped out of school for a semester thinking she’d be gone for only two months. But two months turned into two and half years, and Tragic Kingdom sold 16 million copies. When the tour finally ended, Gwen came home to her childhood bedroom in her parents’ house in Anaheim, older and wiser and rock-star famous. She had outgrown her own life.

Three weeks before I visit her in LA, I meet up with Stefani in London at Home House, a swanky members-only club where she and Rossdale held their wedding reception in September 2002. It is late in the afternoon on a weekday and we are sitting in a quiet, shabby-chic room with a few fussy little sofas and tables scattered about. There are a couple of middle-aged men pretending not to listen, but I can see them peering over their newspapers. Stefani’s wearing a pair of wide-leg pin-striped Gucci pants and a short little tan thrift-store jacket over a very tight Vivienne Westwood camisole and a pair of Sergio Rossi red silk stilettos. Perhaps it has something to do with her getup, or maybe it’s this old-world setting, but the first thing that strikes me about Stefani is that she is surprisingly ladylike.

While Stefani grows tired of being likened to Madonna, the comparison is irresistible. Madonna filtered her Hollywood-starlet persona through the prism of pop; Stefani has done something very similar through rock’n'roll. Like Madonna, Stefani has begun to drift away from a street-punk aesthetic and into the front rows of couture shows. And then, of course, there is the English husband and dual citizenship. In fact, Gavin and Gwen were recently invited over to Madonna and Guy’s house for dinner, just the four of them. “We do have a lot in common,” concedes Stefani.

But while Madonna’s efforts to grow up and act like a lady have always felt a bit forced, Stefani seems innately poised and well mannered. As rough-and-tumble as she gets on stage, Stefani leaves that attitude behind when the concert’s over. There are no Courtney Love histrionics, no Janet Jackson-style wardrobe malfunctions, no J.Lo diva routines. She’s a rare rock star who has it both ways.

Once again, her family seems to have protected her from the worst excesses of her chosen profession, as well as instilled in her a strong set of values. “My mom was really conservative growing up; everything was plain and simple and tasteful, and I couldn’t wait to rip my shirts and cut things up.” To Stefani, the cover of Vogue represents the pinnacle – more important than even Rolling Stone. “When I told my mother I was going to be on Vogue, she started crying.”

Mama Stefani is also beside herself with joy about the fact that her daughter is finally putting out her own collection, L.A.M.B, which debuted in February. “She was looking through the designs in my book, and she got really emotional.” Here, she imitates her mother crying: “It’s in your blood! This is for Great-Grandma!” Turns out Gwen comes from a long line of seamstresses. “My great-grandma used to start on New Year’s day, which was her birthday, and she would sew every person in her family a quilt and, like, flannel pajamas and then the next Christmas you’d get it. Her daughter, my mom’s mom, made every single thing my mother wore, to the point where she didn’t get to choose her own clothes until she was, like, engaged. And then my mom made our clothes. I used to be kind of bummed. Like, ‘Can’t I go to the mall?’”

One of the reasons Stefani’s look has been so distinct from the very beginning is that she has made most of the things she wears on stage herself. When she became successful and began to tour constantly, she felt she lost her way. Then she met the stylist Andrea Lieberman. “I never really knew anything about fashion,” says Stefani. “Andrea made me a lot sleeker and calmed me down. Before I would just wear everything. She matured my style.”

Lieberman had been admiring Stefani from afar. “I remember when I saw her wearing Viktor & Rolf pants in a video and I was like, ‘She is so fly!’ She always had that mad fantastic style, but I felt like nobody had opened her up to the world of couture and designers. But she’s like a kid in a candy store. Her eyes are wide-open. She loves to throw it all on and I’ll come in and be like, ‘There’s something to be said for restraint at times.’ Part of the joy of working with her is that she has this innate understanding, this cool factor. The It-girl thing.”

Their “inspirational tennis match,” as Lieberman puts it, led to Stefani’s designing and launching L.A.M.B. And while the line is pretty much youthful Gwen-style, is there anything more ladylike and feminine than picking up needle and thread?

It’s as if Stefani is trying on the role of womanhood. As she and Rossdale have been seen ringside at the shows in Paris, you get the sense that she enjoys being the soignée bride of an English gentleman. “Being married does make you feel like a woman,” says Stefani. “Other people treat you differently too. They have a respect for you as a duo. It’s kind of cool.”

It’s hard not to wonder if the wedding and her subsequent married life have met Stefani’s very high (and conventional) expectations, which, two albums ago, she addressed head-on. One song was titled, simply, “Marry Me” (“? I wouldn’t mind if my name changed to Mrs. …”), and in another she yearned for a “… simple kind of life/all I needed was a simple man/so I could be a wife.” When I ask her about this, she says, “It’s weird because when I was a little girl I was always looking at bridal magazines and drawing what my wedding dress was going to be like. But it was nothing like that. I was on tour and I came home and Gavin had literally planned the entire thing. And John Galliano made my wedding gown, chose the color, everything. It’s weird because you think you’re going to do all that. I can remember being on tour, crying, ‘I’m missing out on my life!’ But then I got home two weeks before and got adjusted. And it was very romantic because it just felt like Gavin did it all for me.”

One hopes that the 36-year-old Rossdale has a healthy ego because while Stefani’s star has been ever-ascendant, his has cooled off considerably over the last few years. When I ask her what he’s like, she says, “He’s one of those multi-taskers – good at everything. He’s an incredible cook. I totally scored. I’m a big, huge pig and I love eating, and I married a guy who loves to cook.” Rossdale was a serious tennis player when he was young but gave it up when his coach died. “We were in LA at a dinner party, and this guy was like, ‘You should come over to my house and play tennis.’ And that was it. Now he’s playing in celebrity tournaments. He’s a maniac. He plays like three hours a day.”

It is an intriguing role reversal: While Stefani tours the world and seemingly launches one new career after another, Rossdale plans weddings, cooks, plays tennis, and buys art for their two homes. In a funny way, he’s living the life that she’s always dreamed of. And even though they’ve been together for eight years, it seems they’re still getting to know each other. “We never lived together and we never lived in the same country,” says Stefani. “So, all told, we’ve only been together for, like, two years.” She laughs. “We toured so much separately. The most time we would ever spend together before we were married was like four weeks. But this whole past year, we’ve been together almost every day. Which has just been, like, amazing.” She exaggeratedly wipes the back of her hand across her forehead and says, “Phew!” Big laugh. “We like each other!”

Between quietly taking on Hollywood, getting married, and finally designing her own line of clothes, Gwen Stefani is clearly coming into her own. Nowhere is this more evident than in her music. No Doubt’s 2002 album, Rock Steady, was a huge success, both creatively and commercially, spawning four hit singles. After nearly fifteen years of being a freakishly successful ska band, No Doubt finally collaborated with other songwriters and producers. The result was a glittering collection of brilliant high-end pop that jumped all over the musical map. In the meantime, Stefani also cannily laid the groundwork for her solo career in 2001 when she collaborated with Moby on the ghetto-fabulous send-up “South Side” and, again, with Eve, on her single “Let Me Blow Ya Mind.” Suddenly Stefani became a kind of genre-jumping girl wonder, just as at ease in hip-hop, R&B, and dance music as she has been in the rock world for so long. The surprise for Moby, he says, was that “her voice has this very unique timbre and a very distinctive quality. But after spending a day with her in the studio I also realized that she’s incredibly technically proficient and just a really remarkable singer. And she worked really hard.”

As if to prove there’s nothing she can’t do, Stefani is currently putting together her first solo album, which she’s calling “a dance record.” To that end, she’s collaborating with a stellar lineup of producers and songwriters, including André 3000 from OutKast, Dallas Austin, and her ex-boyfriend Tony Kanal. “I really thought this record was going to be easy and fun and short. I’ll do a couple covers, I’ll work with some really talented people, I don’t have to do all the writing. It’s a dance record, so it can’t really be emotional. Well, I’ve written about seventeen songs, and only two of them are good enough.”

Iovine, chairman of Universal’s Interscope division (whom David Geffen recently called “the foremost record executive in the world today”), believes that Stefani’s future has never looked brighter. “It can be as big as she wants it to be. She’s a driven person, and she’s tough on her music. She’s got just enough insecurity to get herself where she is. There’s no arrogance.”

One of things that everyone who works with her seems to agree on is that Stefani is utterly guileless. “There’s no front to her,” says Muller. “It all just kind of pours out. And she’s always kind of in awe of her life. To have done as much as she has and still be grateful and amazed is fantastic.” Or, as Iovine puts it, “She doesn’t exploit herself. She’s not overselling it.”

I ask Iovine if he thinks there are any other female rock stars who are as big as Stefani. “No,” he says. “What Gwen’s got is that she moves the culture. You are truly great when you can move that culture meter—when you can make the needle jump—and I think she’s going to move it a lot in the next five years. She just will. She’s that kind of artist. I’d bet the store on her.”

Let’s face it: A big part of Stefani’s allure is the killer body. She works out religiously, preferring old-school running and weight lifting to yoga or pilates. Not surprisingly, she has been working out extra-hard lately, denying herself the food she loves so much, for her Vogue photo shoot. But after a glass of wine on an empty stomach in her LA living room, she has decided we must go out and get something to eat. “I feel like if I don’t eat, I might lose one more pound.” She pauses. “But I’m starving.” She invites me to join her upstairs while she gets ready and on our way up says, “When I’m home, I work out five days a week. It’s a battle, I have to say. I have to stop myself from eating. Ask anyone around me: I have to struggle to have this hot body!” She laughs. At the top of the stairs, there’s the master bedroom with a giant, dark wooden canopy bed. Over there, in the corner, is her vanity, a minimalist little moderne shrine to makeup and brushes and potions. There’s an office, a guest room, and then, finally, the vast, roaring closet. It’s a converted bedroom, actually, with plush white carpeting and racks and racks of clothes. “Look at how lucky I am,” she says.

This is the biggest closet I’ve ever seen, I say.

“Hello. Haven’t you seen Paula Abdul’s on TV? She has those circular racks, like they have in stores. I was so jealous.” She picks out a pair of boots (brand-new John Galliano pointy neo-Victorian) and sits on the floor to lace them up. Then she goes to the racks and pulls out a ratty yet elegant vintage cardigan with stains on the elbows. And then she throws on a sort of peacoat, and off we go.

We climb into an insanely luxurious Range Rover with a computerized dashboard. “This is Gavin’s,” she says. “I don’t have a car right now.” She pops in a CD and turns it way up. It’s a demo of one of her new songs, called “Crash,” reminiscent of Kelis’s song “Milkshake” and just as infectious. “Japanese or Italian?” she shouts over herself. We settle on Italian, and she points the car to a neighborhood joint where she’s a regular. “It’s nothing fancy-pants,” she says. When we arrive at the restaurant, it’s packed, and we are forced to wait outside on the street. I can see that this makes her a little nervous and maybe a touch annoyed. In London she admits, with refreshing honesty, that “there are certain things about being famous that I love, like being taken care of when I go to a restaurant. I love the attention. It’s fun.”

If Stefani’s career is tied to her physical beauty (it’s hard to imagine her maturing into a chanteuse), then there’s little doubt that she’s in her prime. Once we’re seated, I ask her if she worries about there being a time limit on a female rock star’s career. “When you get past a certain age, you start thinking about life and how much time ’till you die and you start panicking. I want to have a family, and I haven’t even done that yet. I’m worried that I only have a few more years to do this solo record because I don’t think I’ll care about this record when I’m 45. I don’t know. You can’t predict how you’re going to feel.” Then she tells me about a lyric she wrote years ago and has been trying to get in a song ever since: “Born to blossom, bloom to perish.”

But for now, Stefani’s immense appeal shows no signs of waning. A few tables away, there are two young girls who look as if they’re about to burst because of her presence. Stefani notices them and waves. We return to our dinner, and when the plates are cleared, a waitress approaches with a note. “The little girls in the back wanted me to give this to you. They are so terrified.”

“Will you just tell them that they can come say hi to me?” says Stefani. She unfolds the note and says. “Omigod. Oh. My. God.” Turns out one of the girls, Jana, went to school with Gwen’s niece, Madeline. A moment later, the girls appear at our table with their mother. “Jana, you are so cute,” says Stefani. “How old are you?” “Eight,” says her mother. “I can’t believe you know Madeline,” says Stefani. “It’s so weird because she called me last week and she said I’m her favorite singer. For the first time!”

“Has she not said that every day?” says the mom.

“No!” says Stefani. “Because, hello. Have you heard of Hillary Duff? I finally made it onto her radar. I’m taking her to the Grammys, so watch TV. I’m making her a really cute outfit.” (Sure enough, there was Stefani’s niece in the front row of the Grammys in some crazy getup.)

As we drive back to her house, Stefani tells me that there’s a videotape she wants to show me. It’s edited footage of the early days, when Gwen was still the kid sister in her brother’s rock band. Once we arrive, she takes me into a dark, cave-like TV room and pops it into the VCR. Suddenly, a girl appears on the screen. She has long brown hair, a round face, and schlumpy clothes. The only reason I know that it is Gwen Stefani is the voice. The eighteen-year-old girl on the TV looks nothing like the glamorous creature before me. “I don’t even recognize myself,” she says. She fast-forwards through the tape. “I want to show you where my hair goes blonde so you can go, ‘Whoa!’ OK, here it is. See. The blonde hair changed everything. We’re playing at Disneyland. We wanted to do it just to say we did it. That’s the dress I wore on the cover of Tragic Kingdom that I bought for $14 at Contempo Casuals.”

Wow, I say, I can’t believe how different you look.

“Dude, that was a long time ago,” she says. “Let’s face it. I’m way cooler now.”

No Doubt is on hiatus, but Gwen’s still busy. Her clothing line is gearing to launch this fall and she’s getting ready to work with DiCaprio and Scorsese. Is it still a Simple Kind of Life? by Kev Lewin

As a musician, Stefani has welcomed the evolution of the band’s sound while holding true to her roots. She’s a chameleon in the best possible sense. Her openness to collaborate has also been a part of her continued success. The L.A.M.B line of apparel is all part of the agenda.

There’s no doubt marriage has changed Gwen Stefani. Since saying ‘I do’ to Bush frontman Gavin Rossdale three times last September, she has put her music career on hold to concentrate on creating and marketing her unique fashion designs.

Fans of No Doubt may be in mourning as the Californian plans for life away from the group, but the fashion conscious should start celebrating as the style queen attempts to be the new Stella McCartney.

Stefani has a range of ideas she’s hoping to turn into must-haves-from handbags to wallets. Not bad for a girl whose strict Catholic parents made sure their daughter didn’t step out in anything even remotely risqué or eye-catching.

“My parents were very strict,” she said. “I had to wear white underwear until I finished high school.”

Nowadays, Stefani, 33, is all about color and setting fashion trends that thrill. After friends told her to make more of her crazy clothes and accessories, she started the L.A.M.B clothing line of sportwear with designer friend Andrea Lieberman.

“I’m so excited to be able to give my friends a pair of pants from my line and say, ‘They’re mine. I made them,’” she said. “I’ve designed tons of things for myself, but to do something for other people – that’s cool. I never thought I’d have an impact on anyone.”

The L.A.M.B name, which will be featured in bold old-English letters on her designs, is a tribute to her beloved late Lhasa Apso. The name is also inspired by her favorite words: lamb, love, angel, music and baby.

She admits working with Lieberman has really helped turn her crazy outlandish ideas into solid designs. Her line will hit stores early next year.

“She has totally streamlined me,” she said. “To me, there’s not such thing as too much.” John Galliano, who designed the wedding gown Gwen wore to ceremonies in London and Los Angeles, is convinced the starlet and her L.A.M.B partner are sure to become a leading light in fashion circles in the coming years.

“Gwen’s an old-fashioned romantic at heart with a love of breaking with convention,” Galliano said. “That’s good for fashion.”

As if to give the world a taste of things to come, Stefani has collaborated with LeSportsac to create a limited edition of handbags, purses, pouches, wallets and CD cases, which will be available online and at department stores from mid-August.

The accessories, with their eye-catching colors and Stefani’s favorite words “tattooed” on them, are sure to be the thing to be caught carrying this autumn. Stefani has even given her new bags a little rock star chic including some with woven guitar strap handles. She admits her daredevil style comes from a range of influences: her grandmother, ska music fashions, the Far East and vintage Hollywood glamour to name just a few.

Mix them all together and you start to see Stefani’s eclectic creations coming together. Her new clothing line does pose one big problem for the pop star – if it really takes off, will she ever be able to get back to the simple kind of life she once sang about?

Life away from the band has been pretty simple so far. She spends her days contemplating musical collaborations with the likes of Eurythmics musician Dave Stewart and Dr. Dre and enjoying married life. She’s even being considered for film roles after losing the chance to appear in “Chicago” to Mya.

Stefani has been linked to several projects, including Leonardo DiCaprio’s new Howard Hughes movie The Aviator. Director Martin Scorsese and co-starring Cate Blanchett and Kate Beckinsale, it’s a chance to impress in her very first film, where she’ll play silver screen diva Jean Harlow.

She insists she’s up for the challenge. “I’ve auditioned for lots of things, but always when the band was about to make a record or go out on tour,” she said. “I think that to do something like acting, which is so difficult, really well, I have to put all my passion into it. I’m ready to focus on it now.”

Stefani’s biological clock seems to be ticking pretty loud these days too – one of the main reason why a break from No Doubt was important to her was her keenness to become a mother.

“We’re taking a little break,” she said. “We’ve never taken a break before even and this is our 16th anniversary and this is a perfect time for the group. We’re starting families now for the first time and we’re enjoying taking a break. For me, I want to be a grandma. I love my 30s so far. I just want to live life right now.”

That’s not to say Stefani and Rossdale are already making plans for a child, but surely the announcement isn’t far away. “Maybe next year, we’ll have some babies,” she said.

Her bandmates couldn’t be happier for their singer. “She wanted to be a mom when we first met. She’ll make a great mom. I think it’s a good time for her to take stock,” said drummer Adrian Young.

Stefani also seems to be very in touch with her own sexuality – highlighted by her revealing outfits and her stint as a dancer with Hollywood burlesque troupe The Pussycat Dolls. Dolls founder Robin Antin is convinced the singer is “a child of the night,” who loves to be noticed – and she’s convinced her clothing line will help other girls achieve stunning results.

“She can stop traffic. She came to see a Pussycat Dolls show at the Viper Room in Los Angeles and she just loved it,” Antin said. “She was like, ‘Oh, my God, this is exactly what I’ve always wanted to do.’ So, we got her in the show one night and she was amazing. So sexy.”

Stefani admits it’s often hard to believe that she’s living the busy life she always dreamed of.

“It’s like a platinum blonde life,” she laughed. “Sometimes I have to remember to keep walking forward, becuase it all blows my mind.”

Transcribed by Tabitha for No Doubt Scrapbook. What a star!

It’s Gwen’s world – we just live in it. How everything this rock rebel touches turns platinum. By Lisa Johnson.

After performing live in the Super Bowl in front of an estimated 100 million screaming fans, Gwen Stefani is no longer “just a girl in the world.” The hard-bodied, platinum blonde has combined grunge and glamour to fashion herself into a trendsetting pop icon of “Madonna” proportions. On the verge of launching her own fashion line, the award-winning singer/songwriter is responsible for three platinum albums and sold-out concert tours the world over. But will the savagely cut Amazon who begins her concerts with perfectly posed push-ups and stalks the stage in boxing boots ever be comfortable in her own flawless skin? Many of the hit songs she writes and sings are full of the same insecurities, longing, jealousy, and pain, that the rest of us mere mortals experience. Perhaps her group’s name, No Doubt, is more of a queston than a declaration.

Gwen certainly started life like the rest of us, except she had a rollercoaster in her backyard. Born on October 3, 1969 in Orange County’s Anaheim, home of the original Disneyland in Southern California, Gwen had two brothers, Eric and Tony, one sister, Jill, and competed on her high school swim team, then attended classes at Fullerton College.

“I Was Never a Leader”

When her keyboard-playing brother Eric invited her to join his newly formed ska-punk band, she obliged, not because she wanted to be a rock star or thought she was a great singer. Gwen joined the band because she was used to following her big brother. “I did whatever he told me to do. I was never a leader,” she says.

It was during the early years of the band’s existence that clouds first began to obscure the sunshine of Gwen’s young life. Her brother left the group to pursue other interests, and the group’s original lead singer, John Spence, took his own life. Gwen also began a tumultuous romantic relationship with the group’s bassist, Tony Kanal. No Doubt was eight years and two albums old before they got their first hit, Spider Webs, on their soon-to-be smash album, “Tragic Kingdom,” a dark play on Disney’s “Magic Kingdom” in Gwen’s old neighborhood, where she was still living at home with her parents. Gwen has come a long way sice moving out and going on her first concert tour. At least, it would seem that way on the outside. She lives in a gated villa in the Griffith Park section of the Hollywood Hills in Los Angeles, and, as of September 14, she’s happily married to her six-year love, Bush front-man Gavin Rossdale, whom she met in Southern California in the Spring of 1996, when the two bands were on tour together. They now split whatever time they have together when their bands are not on tour, between Gavin’s London flat and Stefani’s Hollywood home.

Their weddings (there were two, actually, one in London, one in Los Angeles) were the stuff of fairy tales. Gwen’s friend, Chanel’s John Galliano, designed a stunning, traditional pink-tinged, cream-colored dress especially for her. The first ceremony, held mostly for Gavin’s people, took place in St. Paul’s Church in London’s posh Covent Garden. Gavin wore a tuxedo and his trademark designer shades through the entire ceremony. His Scottish mother wore a traditional British morning suit, and even the couple’s Hungarian sheepdog Winston was decked with pink and purple flowers on his collar.

After a quickie honeymoon in France, the couple went thrugh the nuptial routine again in California on September 28. That ceremony was attended by the princess-like bride’s celebrity friends, including Ben Stiller and Courteney Cox Arquette.

Gwen’s Fabric Kingdom

Gwen’s belly-baring, bindi-wearing style has been voraciously copied by “Gwenabes” the world over, who now will be able to go legit. Gwen is landing her own fahion line. The apparel line won’t fully debut until spring of 2004, but she’s teaming with LeSportsac for a series of bags and accessories due in stores September 1.

The line has been dubbed L.A.M.B., an acronym of her favorite words – love, angel, music, baby – which will be printed in white letters on the bags. Items to be released this fall inclue wristlets, CD and iPod cases, cosmetic clutches, handbags, wallets, totes, even a tour bag duffel, most made of rip-stop nylon with grosgrain accents, antiqued metal hardware and woven guitar strap handles. They’ll be priced from $20 to $158.

The winner of the best Rock Style at the 2001 VH1/Vogue Fashion awards owes much of her look to friend and stylist Andrea Leiberman, but the two work together to come up with Gwen’s unique look. And there have been more than a few “misses.” Her baggy, low-slung plaid pants in addition to heavy leather, chains, and bathing suit tops, have landed her on more than one “fashion don’t” list.

“You get dressed up and share it with people,” Gwen says, without much ado. “I’ve always thought about being a fashion designer. But I never did anything about it.”

Even with a life most of us would consider beyond perfect, Gwen still has doubts. “I think I’ve been able to fool a lot of people because I know I’m a dork,” she says. “I’m a geek.” Most people would have no doubt the opposite is true. To many, Gwen Stefani has become the Queen of Cool.

Ms. Stefani is already a rock rebel, a girl-power icon, and a style star. Now, Lauren Waterman finds, she’s going for blissed-out bride, fashion designer, and silver-screen queen, too. By Lauren Waterman

Back when Gwen Stefani was just a girl, she never imagined for herself the kind of life she has now. Even though she loved Julie Andrews and Emmylou Harris and was, as she says with a perfectly straight face, “very affected by The Muppet Movie,” she never thought she’d be a performer. “I didn’t think I’d have an impact on anyone,” she says.

Gwen and I are sitting together at the end of a huge conference table in a back office of Orlando’s Hard Rock Hotel – she’s between stops on a seven-week tour with her band, No Doubt – and as she finishes her sentence, the door behind her swings open, right on cue. It’s the room service guy, bearing cups of English breakfast tea, and as if to underscore Gwen’s point, he immediately accosts her. “Gwen Stefani!” he yells, grinning from ear to ear. “Hiya!” He sets down the tray and, with little finesse, asks for four tickets to that night’s show. I’m rolling my eyes at this point, but Gwen graciously agrees. Finally her bodyguard rises from his seat on the other side of the room and subtly intercedes, taking the fan’s name for the guest list even as he ushers him out the door.

“See, I know everyone,” Gwen says with a little smile, delicately acknowledging her discomfort and at the same time brushing it aside. Whether or not she ever imagined herself in this kind of situation, here, for better or for worse, she is. It’s been like this ever since No Doubt’s ska-punk sound first penetrated MTV eight years ago. Back then, the cobwebs of grunge – the angst, the flannel – still clung, so a girl like Gwen, with her retro rolled bangs (inspired by her grandma), her bindi (borrowed from band mate and ex-boyfriend Tony Kanal’s mom), her punker pants, and her California-girl cropped tops might have attracted outside attention even if her songs hadn’t been up to par.

But, of course, they were – thanks to Gwen’s timely discovery of her inner pop star. “I was a very passive person groing up,” she explains. When Eric, the big brother she idolized, encouraged her to join his band, she did, not because she thought she could sing (she didn’t) but because “I did whatever he told me to do. I was never a leader,” she muses. “I didn’t need to be.” It was only after Tony and Gwen broke up and Eric left the band that she really started to find herself as a songwriter. “All of a sudden, it was like, ‘Where did this come from?’” she remembers with a laugh.

No Doubt’s Tragic Kingdom went platinum in 1996, thanks in large part to the power of Gwen’s voice and her go-girl personality. And each subsequent album – Return of Saturn and Rock Steady – has only increased the band’s critical cred and popularity. “It’s cool to be respected for things I’m passionate about,” says Gwen. At the same time, she can get overwhelmed by the attention, which she thinks peaked around the time of her wedding to Bush’s Gavin Rossdale.

It’s hard to blame people for being so interested in Gwen and Gavin. After all, they’re talented, successful, fantastic-looking, and – it’s clear – very much in love. When they were introduced in 1996, Gwen liked Gavin immediately. “He looked so familiar to me,” she says. “There was something about him. The first thing I said to him was, ‘You’ve got gorgeous eyes.’” By the end of the night, Gavin had told Gwen that she was gorgeous, too.

After he asked her to marry him on New Year’s Day 2002, Gwen enlisted a friend, Christian Dior designer John Galliano, to make her gown. “Gwen is an old-fashioned romantic at heart,” explains Galliano. “We share a deep respect for tradition, yet also a love of breaking with convention. We wanted the effect to be dreamy, with a contemporary twist.” The pink and ivory dress he created – as well as Gwen’s wedding ring, a wide platinum (of course!) band paved with diamonds and top with a heart-shaped stone set inside interlocking Gs – is dazzling, totally romantic, and extremely cool, just like Gwen herself.

Even the fact that she hasn’t seen Gavin much since their second wedding – they had twin ceremonies in London and LA, with a honeymoon in between – can’t rattle Gwen’s newlywed bliss. “When we got married,” she says, “we promised we would be there for each other. So it’s cool if we’re apart now; we’re going to be together forever. I’m totally with him in my heart.” Still, Gwen does look forward to being with Gavin – and not just in her heart – when No Doubt finishes their tour. As for what else she’ll do, she’s happy to keep he options wide open. “One of the benefits of the band’s success is that we don’t have to think too far ahead,” she says. “I get to enjoy what I’m doing right now.”

In the fall, Gwen is launching a clothing line she’s designing with her friend and stylist Andrea Lieberman. They’re been collaborating on Gwen’s look for a few years – “She totally streamlined me,” says Gwen, “because to me, there’s no such thing as too much” – and suddenly it just felt like the right time to strike out on their own. “We were already making lots of my clothes,” she says,” and we have so much fun working together, so why not?” They’ve named the line L.A.M.B, which was what Gwen called her dearly departed little Lhasa apso (in “Platinum Blonde Life,” she sings, “Where did my lamb go? I feel as empty as a widow”). It’s also an endearment she reserves for her best friends and an acronym that “has different meanings, none of which I’m ready to reveal.”

When I ask if she’s planning a J.Lo-style in-store assault – logo sweatsuits, rhinestone-studded denim, signature perfume – Gwen says no. “This is truly my look,” she says. “It’s going to be based on everything I’ve ever worn, from my first punker pants to the present.” It will be a collection of pieces that, when put together just so, will subtly convey the Stefani sensibility. Considering Gwen’s fashion history, the line looks set to be a success. After all, she’s inspired flocks of so-called “Gwennabes” since her bindi days, and she always manages to make the most out-there ideas – blue hair, braces, bikini tops as eveningwear – look totally in. But it’s charmingly, utterly Gwen that what excites her most about L.A.M.B is the prospect of presenting the finished pieces to her friends. “To hand them a pair of pants and say, ‘They’re mine; I made them!’” she enthuses.

Gwen’s also looking forward to jump-starting another longtime dream of hers: She tells me she “very badly” wants to be an actress. “I’ve auditioned for lots of things, but always when the band was about to make a record or go out on tour. I think that to do something like acting, which is so difficult, really well, I have to put all my passion into it. I’m ready to focus on it now.” Since one of the “things” she missed out on was Mya’s part as one of the murderous yet glamorous Cell Block Girls in Chicago, expect to see Gwen taking a small role in a prestigious picture like Moulin Rouge, not starring in a big shiny vanity vehicle like Crossroads or Glitter. “I think acting is an art,” she explains,” and auditioning can be terrifying or humiliating, especially since people know who I am… It’s the challenge that drives me to want to do it.”

But don’t worry that all this fashion and film and true romance is going to keep Gwen away from music. It’s her first love, and even though she has no specific plans to make a new album with her band, she knows she’ll always come back to it. “We didn’t plan to make the last one either,” she notes. Plus, she’s very interested in doing more high-profile collaborations like the hits she made recently with Moby and Eve. “Dre told me he’s ready any time I am,” she says happily.

“Sometimes,” Gwen tells me, “it seems like good things just happen all around me.” She might be selling her own powers a little short – even her friend Galliano insists that Gwen is “very much in control of her destiny” – but it’s easy to understand her point. Because she didn’t expect to be living what she calls a “platinum blonde life,” the scenery can be, at times, a little baffling. But her excitement and energy are truly infectious. “It’s crazy,” she says, shaking her head. “Sometimes I have to remember to keep walking forward, because it all blows my mind.”