Thanks to JaChiKo and Carly at NDWeb.com

Gwen is featured in Koneko a Anime/Manga magazine from Germany. The clipping compares the logos for Gwen’s L Fragrance with the japenese film “Death Note” as both use the same font.

Gwen’s our fave fashion and pop icon and all-round quirky chick – No Doubt about it!

Hi there, Gwen! Good to catch up with you – how are you doing?
“I’m great, thanks!”

You’re famed for your bold fashion statements and for being a trendsetter. Do you choose all your outfits yourself?
“Well, I have stylists who bring things in for me, although I still get very excited about what I’m going to wear every day! I used to make my own clothes when I was younger, too, so it’s very exciting for me!”

Well, now you’ve got your own, über-cool fashion labels and a signature perfume, too. Tell us about them…
“I have a whole range of merchandise called L.A.M.B, which is named after the initials of my first solo album, Love Angel Music Baby. Plus there’s another, called Harajuku Lovers, inspired by Japanese street style. My perfume is called L, which again stands for Love and it’s like me shrunken into a little box!”

Your hands-on attitude to design led you to breaking a finger while stitching an outfit! Was that your x-ray that you put on one of your t-shirts?
“No, that was Tony Kanal’s [No Doubt bassist and Gwen's ex]. He broke hisfinger and sent me the x-ray, so I did a t-shirt saying ‘Broken’ and the x-ray printed on it!”

Your stage clothes are really incredible, too. What happens to them after a tour?
“I auction them to my fans to raise money for charity. It’s very exciting to be able to share them in this way and do some good.”

What do you like to do when you get a day off from your hectic pop-star life?
“I absolutely love to watch TV and my favourite channel is Discovery Health. I also like those reality shows where they do makeovers on people – it’s fun to see the before and after comparisons!”

We’re hooked on reality shows too! What’s your fave snack food while you’re watching telly?
“Oh I love food! I’m weak for cookies and pizza, so I will have a little here and there.”

Living in the spotlight must be tough, though?
“It can be frustrating and hard sometimes but I’ve been really lucky to have Gavin [her hubby, British rock star and actor Gavin Rossdale]. He relates to and understands what I’m going through and knows what the music business is like.”

Your song Wind It Up samples a song from The Sound Of Music and you dress up like Maria in the video. IS it your fave musical?
“I love Julie Andrews [who played Maria in the original film]. And I remember when I was a little girl and went to see the movie, it was such a huge inspiration for me. There are loads of references to it in my video.”

And finally – one more question about fashion! You seem to be a lot more down to earth than the average fashionista, so how do you feel about your “style icon” status?
“I think that I’ve been able to fool a lot of people into thinking I’m pretty hip, but in reality I’m just a big dork! I’m just an Orange County girl from a loving family, making music with my friends!”

Gwen – dressed to impress

“I remember when I was in school, they’d ask, ‘What are you going to be when you grow up?’ And then you’d have to draw a picture of it. I drew myself as a bride.”

“Now I’m a mother, I think I should always dress as a character for my children, so they think their mom is Alice in Wonderland or Cinderella.”

“Sometimes you have to sacrifice your performance for high heels”

“Being in music, you can wear whatever you want – it’s like an excuse for Hallowe’en every day!”

“I’d like to be one of the guys, but I wanna wear a lot of make-up”

Gwen’s favourite things

Favourite Food “Sushi”

Fave make-up “Bright-red Lipstick”

Best Place to live “California and then London”

Favourite song on your new album “4 In The Morning”

Best chillout place “The park, ’cause it’s peaceful”

Fave fashion designer “Vivienne Westwood. I might as well just go there and hand over my entire pay-cheque, I spend so much money there!”

Fave theatre show “The Sound Of Music”

Favourite band “No Doubt, of course! My intention is to get back into the studio and record with them again.”

Fave sport “Swimming. I used to swim in for my high school.”

Favourite saying “Workin’ it!”

Gwen tells us what gets her grinning

She might have found fame with her band and as a solo singer, but she’s played with a multitude of styles and looks that she’s almost as famous for. And that’s the really surprising thing about Gwen in the flesh – when you look at her up close, she doesn’t look like any of her guises. Sure, the bright lips, arched eyebrows and platinum locks are there, but somehow there’s another Gwen underneath. One who looks a lot softer and sweeter than her high fashion image might suggest.

Today, she’s tired because she’s slap bang in the middle of a world tour, but that doesn’t seem to affect her enthusiasm. “It’s because she has baby Kingston with her,” says a source who works closely with her whenever she’s in London. “Having him around makes her happy.”

She’s mega busy at the moment, too – besides the world tour, she’s styling the latest ranges for L.A.M.B and Harajuku Lovers (all the harder because her designer has just quit to go solo), working on her fragrance launch, writing new material for her band No Doubt AND fitting in time to be a wife and mum. But she’s happy – and here’s how she keeps smiling…

Gwen’s get grinning guide

1. “I try to stay normal.”
   With all her fame and money, it would be easy for Gwen to hide away from the attention from fans and the Press, but that doesn’t appeal to her. “We live in Los Feliz in California, and walk around everywhere with Kingston,” she says. “I want him to grow up as normal as possible. I don’t want him to hae a ’studio tan’ from not getting out for walks and staying in all the time. Or only being in his own backyard most of the time.”
2. “I’m really passionate about all the things I do.”
   “I have stylists who bring in things for me that just make me say, ‘Ah I am dying to wear that!’ I still get very excited about what I’m going to wear every day and what the baby is going to wear,” says Gwen. And this passion shows in both her music and her style. “It’s because both are so closely linked,” her London pal says, speaking exclusively to Bliss. “A lot of the L.A.M.B collection is influenced by music and street culture, so it works. Gwen doesn’t do either job half-heartedly. She works on every part of the design of her clothes collection with her small team. And she writes and works on the music production and is involved with video treatments too.”
3. “Rubbish telly can cheer me up.”
   “I am one of those Discovery Health Channel junkies who loves to watch those plastic surgery operations,” Gwen says of her guilty pleasure. “Other people in the room tend to be grossed out – I can watch people get cut open without squinting. I like to see the before and after. I’m personally not ready for anything being done to myself yet, though – people take going under the knife a little too casually in Hollywood it is a major surgery, after all.”
4. “I like to take on new challenges.”
   With everything that’s going on in her life, it would be understandable if Gwen just wanted to put her feet up for a bit – but she’s still doing new things, like her fragrance launch. “I can tell you that it smells good,” she says. “I doesn’t smell like burnt bacon!”
5. “Family is everything to me”
   “I absolutely want to have more kids! I love being a mother, it’s hard work but it’s the most fun you can have, too. And Gavin is such a loving dad and romantic husband. I’ve been really lucky! It totally changes your life, just like they say – whether your husband is a rock star or not!”
6. “Having a rock star husband does help!”
   “You know, our relationship has hills and valleys like any other, but he can relate to what I go through and with how the music business is,” Gwen says. “It can be so frustrating at times. You and your record company might not see eye to eye on new material or they might want to put an album out at a different time that you want to.”
7. “I work hard to get through the tough stuff”
   Gwen admits that there have been three really low points in her life – when she broke up with Tony Kanal, her No Doubt bandmate, when she and Gavin took a break from each other in 1999 and then when she found out that Gavin was Daisy Lowe’s dad. “You can tell by my style that I was searching so hard,” she says of the rough patch in 1999. “I was 29, and I was like, f*** it, I’m going to dye my hair pink.” And I had braces, the one thing I bought when I got rich.” And that’s the impression that Gwen gives. She doesn’t seem to wear her heart on her sleeve and tell the world all about her personal problems. She just works through them in her own unique way.
8. “I made the choice to work hard and to look good”
   “I love food, but I also love clothes,” says Gwen of her great dilemma. “I have a tendancy to be a little chunky. I am weak for cookies and pizza, but I let myself have a little here and there. I honestly have been on a diet since I was 10! I try to use the term ‘lifestyle eating’ now instead of diet, because I hate the whole concept, which I think suggests deprivation.”
9. “Writing helps me work out my head”
   “Writing the third album was a really hard time for me,” she says now. “I thought, I goota become a great writer, I gotta live up to who I want to be. I really define myself as a songwriter, it’s torture, but it’s magic when it happens.”
10. “I don’t care what others think about me”
    “I have a bit of whimsical side and am rather child-like in some ways. I’ve been criticised as being ‘too old’ to wear something and I don’t care. I still wear high-top sneakers, which I wore in high school and I will do the bare midriff thing as long as it doesn’t look too blubbery around the middle as I get older!”

Gwen Stefani struggles with motherhood and career

Gwen Stefani is a woman of many talents – singer, songwriter, fashion designer, actress and now creator of her own signature scent. But with a 15-month-old son, too, it can be hard to hold it all together

Gwen Stefani makes her entrance into Soho House in New York on a wave of “frangipani blossom, peach skin and sensual musk”.

She is here, amid much brouhaha, to launch her signature scent L – named after her clothing label and her breakthrough 2004 solo album, both Love Angel Music Baby (LAMB).

Walking into the marquee that has been erected over a rooftop pool in which two synchronised swimmers are performing to “The Sweet Escape” (from her second solo album of the same name), the singer and designer embarks on a mass meet-and-greet session with the American press that involves much squealing and smiling (from them and her).

Gwen Stefani performing in concert; she says she finds it difficult juggling motherhood and career and leaving baby Kingston when she is away for work

Wearing a black off-the-shoulder jumpsuit and high, high heels, she works the room with her customary enthusiasm, happily chatting about the evolution of a perfume that, she says, is a “condensed version of me”.

It is only later, when we sit down after the official launch for an exclusive one-to-one talk, that she gives any indication of how difficult it actually is to hold together all the different facets that make up Gwen Stefani.

The singer, writer, designer, mother and occasional actress (she played Jean Harlow in Martin Scorsese’s Oscar-winning film The Aviator) is launching her fragrance in the midst of a gruelling international Sweet Escape tour, which started in April and will end in Budapest on 19 October (she is in the UK from 20 to 31 September), and, however determinedly she is smiling, she must be exhausted.

Indeed, the mention of the name “Kingston”, her 15-month-old son by her British husband and fellow musician Gavin Rossdale, prompts a quivering of scarlet lips and a momentary slip of the heavy mask of make-up that she wears.

“Oh, please don’t go there. It’s the first time I have left him and I am very emotional,” she says, pulling a plaintive expression that, in close-up, reveals deep shadows beneath her eyes.

“I think it’s very hard for women to get the balance right.

“It’s difficult and I struggle with it, but just when I think my plate is a little too full, Gavin comes to the rescue and the next thing you know, it all works out.”

Gavin, whom she married in 2002, is looking after Kingston at home in Los Angeles (their main base, although they maintain a home in London’s Primrose Hill and are “a little bit at home everywhere”).

It would seem that nowadays the former rock god (his band Bush, which disbanded in 2002, had huge success in the US but limited exposure in Britain) is happier with a baby-sling strapped round his torso than he is with a guitar.

His career (he recently announced that he is recording a solo album) appears to be taking second, or maybe even third place to Gwen and Kingston.

“Kingston is super into his dad right now and I am a little, well – I am really happy for Gavin, but there is a part of me that is like, ‘What about me?’ Kingston still doesn’t sleep through the night, so his dad usually takes him for an hour or two in the morning so that I can sleep.

“And as soon as Gavin goes to brush his teeth, Kingston starts crying – it’s hilarious,” she says.

It is, Gwen says, her family that grounds her and prevents her, in the wake of her extraordinary ongoing success, from losing touch with reality.

Kingston is accompanying her on tour, and her conditions include (along with an impressive array of organic foods and herbal teas) a cot on the tour bus and a room at every venue with baby toys, a changing station and a rocking chair.

Family is clearly Gwen’s bedrock (she is confident there will be more babies), but it is a subject that I have been warned not to raise – primarily because of the difficulties that have arisen from the shock discovery that Gavin’s godchild, Daisy Lowe, the eldest child of rock chick Pearl Lowe, is actually his biological daughter.

Gwen has never spoken about the scandal and the couple are not believed to have had any contact with Daisy (now 18 and a successful model) since the DNA results were confirmed several years ago.

As engaging and friendly as Gwen is (she shows great interest in my own family and rushes to sign a copy of her album for my son), I do not dare to mention her stepdaughter, although I do ask why she isn’t slowing down her career a little as she reaches her late 30s (she will be 38 in October, which is surely middle-aged for the youth-obsessed pop market she currently dominates).

Instead, with the new scent, the gruelling tour and an expansion of her clothing range, she seems to be pushing the boundaries of her career further and further.

Asked the simple question, “When are you going to slow down?”, she is quick to reply that until the work “stops being fun” she will carry on moving forward.

Perpetuating the iconic image of the dazzling blonde is the least difficult part of her life. The dressing-up, making-up and constant reinvention come totally naturally to Gwen.

“I have been playing this same game my whole life.

“I love make-up, I love doing hair and I always played dollies and house. My dad made us children a wendy house and we would play mummies and daddies all the time. My whole life I have been ‘me’,” she says, with a howl of laughter.

Gwen is so girlie that it might be irritating if it weren’t for her self-awareness and self-deprecation.

She confesses that she is “so vain” and that she began dieting “when I was in sixth grade [11 to 12 years old] – it’s an ongoing battle and it’s a nightmare”.

And she recalls that during her high-school years, she was the ringleader of a group of girls that sound like something out of one of those Californian teen movies.

“I met my best friend recently – I hadn’t seen her for a while and she has just had a baby – and we were remembering how we would go home from school and put on her mum’s make-up and spend the whole afternoon doing our hair and posing.

“I was the hair and make-up person for our whole group; I would burn everyone’s ears with curling irons and I cut everyone’s hair,” she says, rolling her eyes at the memory.

Born and raised in Fullerton, California, she is the second of four children (she has one older brother and a younger brother and sister) of Dennis, a marketing executive of Italian-American extraction, and Patti, a stay-at-home mum.

The family was very musical – her parents loved Bob Dylan and folk music – and her father encouraged her singing and songwriting, but advised her not to take lessons because her voice was so unique.

After graduating from high school she enrolled at California State University, but dropped out in 1986 to sing in her elder brother Eric’s band, No Doubt (he played keyboards, but later left to become an animator on The Simpsons).

Gwen’s first great love was fellow band-mate Tony Kanal (with whom she is still friends and who was the inspiration for her 2005 hit “Cool”), but in 1995 she became involved with Gavin Rossdale, then the hugely glamorous front man of Bush (they met when his tour manager suggested No Doubt open for Bush on tour).

Singing with a band in the early 90s, she says, toughened her up and played a part in the development of an image that is feminine but also very strong and challenging.

“I was the only girl in Orange County in a band. At the time, all the other bands were kind of punk rock, hard bands, and they would say all these terrible things to me like, ?’Go on, show us your t***.’ So I developed this tough side, which was, ‘OK, you can look at me but don’t touch,’ ” she says, running a hand through her hair (pulled into a tight chignon today).

The success of No Doubt – whose most memorable hit was 1995’s “Don’t Speak” – propelled Gwen into the public consciousness, but it wasn’t until she made her first solo album, Love Angel Music Baby, in 2004, that she achieved the iconic status she enjoys today, with a string of hits such as “What You Waiting For?” and “Hollaback Girl”.

Along with her childhood love of playing with hair and make-up, Gwen also possesses a quirky, natural style that makes her a favourite with fashionistas (she is being tailed during the launch by a camera crew from American Vogue) and has made her clothing line a huge success with young women.

Ambitious and driven though she undoubtedly is, she is also nonetheless baffled and bemused by the length (“it’s been a very long 15 minutes of fame for me”) and depth of her celebrity, and puts much of her success down to one thing: “magic”.

“I have to believe in magic because look at my life.

“I mean, how did this happen to me? You know what I am saying? I am just a girl from Orange County, I truly am.”

As our interview draws to a close, I ask her what is the single most beautiful smell in the world (we are, after all, meant to be talking about her perfume) and she instantly switches from the zany girl who believes in magic (but has worked relentlessly to make that magic happen) into a vulnerable mother who is missing her child.

“My baby. There are so many smells that come with a baby and I enjoy them all – even the stinky ones – because he is just so delicious. Oh my God, that morning baby breath when they wake up and yawn – I love that smell,” she says, becoming visibly anxious and emotional as the subject hits on her small son again.

But not so anxious and emotional that she doesn’t add – suddenly mindful that she should be promoting her own scent rather than her son’s – a quick plug for the equally delicious L fragrance.

“I have been trying to find a way to describe why I am so excited by this smell. It’s an extension of my personality and you can’t force it on somebody – they are either going to like it or they are not. But I am loving it.”

She’s got style, she’s got songs and, in her leopard-print jumpsuit, she’s got balls. At 37, with a one-year-old baby, Gwen Stefani has finally found pop stardom. She tells Craig McLean about motherhood, self-obsession and her fashion label.

She might be wearing her sparkly leotard-cum-dungarees ensemble. Or a pair of sequined red hot pants. Or a tartan schoolgirl’s uniform. Maybe she’ll have slipped into one of her favourite outfits: armpit-length black leather gloves and monochrome horizontal stripes (imagine an escaped convict hiding out in a burlesque joint).

If you’re reading this on Sunday morning Gwen Renée Stefani will be on stage in Australia, performing her idiosyncratic version of disco funk in front of thousands of tweens, teens and twentysomething pop fans in the Adelaide Entertainment Centre. For 90 sweaty minutes there will be no let-up in the costume changes, choreography – part Broadway show, part cheerleader rally, part hip hop face-off – and belting pop songs.

The ex-No Doubt frontwoman-turned-solo star is midway through a world tour. So far, Stefani has completed a run of 15,000-seater arenas in North America, Central America, South America, and New Zealand. Next week, team Stefani – six musicians, a squad of female dancers known as the Harajuku Girls, and a bunch of male breakdancers – move into the Far East and then Europe.

Finally, towards the end of October, following a final bow on the stage of Prague’s Sazka Arena, Gwen Stefani returns home. The only question then will be which home: the Los Angeles mansion or the huge townhouse that she and Gavin Rossdale, the British singer and guitarist, keep in north London celebrity enclave, Primrose Hill?

The Sweet Escape tour 2007 would be tough on a bunch of fresh-faced lads with guitars. Imagine how hard-going it must be on a 37-year-old multi-tasking pop singer, fashion designer and first-time mother who, when I met her in London before the tour’s launch was still breast-feeding her son Kingston, born in May 2006.

‘I don’t know when I’m going to stop breast-feeding,’ Stefani chirps as she motors into the hotel suite, fresh from another feed. ‘I’ll just keep going while I can – like, he’s getting his teeth so it is a little bit scary. He’s bitten me a few times!’

Gwen Stefani doesn’t do anything by half. Breast-feeding, she gushes, ‘is just obviously really convenient with my lifestyle’. Baby Kingston was ‘genius’ on the flight from Los Angeles to London. ‘He nursed then went to sleep. But he doesn’t sleep through the night,’ she says brightly. ‘He’s up every three hours to feed.’

Nonetheless, today Stefani looks as glamorous as ever. The colour scheme is black and white: vertiginous YSL heels, skintight Balenciaga trousers, Azzedine Alaïa sweater, crisp shirt (‘I can’t remember the designer’) and chunky, diamond-encrusted pendant.

I could put her speedy chat down to sleep deprivation and jetlag. But I’ve met her before and she chewed my ear off then, too. Imagine a torrent of Valley Girl and not much regard for punctuation. But don’t be fooled by the ditsy blonde you might have seen dolled up as Alice in Wonderland and goofing through lavish videos  like the one for her Grammy-nominated ‘What You Waiting For?’ single. On her own and with No Doubt, the Orange County band that California-born Stefani joined when she was 17, she’s sold 30 million albums. That include seven million copies of her solo debut  from 2004, Love.Angel.Music.Baby. It featured four top-10 hits andd won her the 2005 Brit Award for Best International Female.

Just 13 weeks after giving birth, she hired Keane songwriter Tim Rice-Oxley, producer Pharrell Williams, Depeche Mode legend Martyn Gore and released her second solo album The Sweet Escape. Even her acting debut was in an epic, playing Jean Harlow in The Aviator, Martin Scorsese’s biopic of Howard Hughes. ‘I’m vain enough to want to do a movie again,’ she admits, but right now more roles ‘are the last thing on my list’. There’s too much else going on.

The initials of her first album gave her the name for her fashion label, L.A.M.B. When the line debuted on the New York catwalk in Fashion Week of September 2005, Stefani described it as ‘a little bit Sound of Music. A little bit Orange County. A little bit of the Rastafarian rasta girls. A little bit English Great Gatsby garden-party girls. Pretty much the same thing I always do, but different versions of it.’

A Gwen Stefani fashion label made brilliant business sense. She’s become one of those pop stars whose innate style – a sort of streetwise haute couture – means that she wields influence beyond the stage. Women watch what she puts on in the morning in the same way as they do with Madonna or Kylie.

‘I think Gwen is the ultimate 21st-century pin up,’ says Stefan Lindermann of Grazia magazine, which features Stefani time and time again. ‘She’s modern-retro – she plays on the pin-up thing with her vintage aesthetic, but she’s also ultra-modern. Like her music, her style is sexy but also out there – eclectic, almost aggressive. She’s no victim, and certainly no fashion victim. With someone like Victoria Beckham, you can see that a stylist has decided what she’s going to wear and put it together piece by piece, but Gwen’s style always seems organic.’

Sales of her label in the smarter department stores of New York, London and Tokyo have been healthy and Nicole Kidman and Teri Hatcher are fans. However there was a hiccup earlier this year when Stefani’s designer, Zaldy, left her to concentrate on his own lines, notable for Scissor Sisters.

‘It was unfortunate timing,’ she says. ‘I was like, “Don’t just plop this on me!” Now it’s just me and my stylist doing the Spring 08 collection. But I’d love to have a bigger design team. Someone like Marc Jacobs, I wonder how many people are working there, just feeding him ideas, feeding feeding feeding… I have, like maybe five people in my entire team. I’m very hands on with it, but it’s got to change, I’ve got to get more people.’

She does if L.A.M.B keeps expanding. She’s recently moved into handbags and launched a diffusion line, Harajuku Lovers. And what celebrity franchise is complete without a perfume? Her latest venture is a bespoke scent called L. ‘I would never have done a fragrance as ce-leb-ri-tee…’ she maintains, tapping the syllables out on her tongue, ‘just to do one for the sake of it. But because I have L.A.M.B it’s really the most milestone, prestigious kinda moment. Basically, you have an inspiration of a perfume that you like, whether it’s a flower or a certain direction.’

Gwen Stefani’s first stage appearance was at a school talent show, wearing a self-made copy of the drop-waist tweed dress that Maria wore while singing ‘I Have Confidence’ in The Sound of Music. She grew up with three siblings in a comfortable middle-class household in southern California. Her father worked in marketing for Yamaha motorbikes. Her housewife mother was a seamstress, and teenage Gwen made her own clothes, too.

‘My parents always pushed creativity on us, but they made it seem like the fun thing to do.’

Aged 17, at her older brother Eric’s invitation, she became the singer in his ska-flavoured new band. No Doubt was influenced by Madness and the Selecter, British bands who were curiously popular in California  in the early Eighties. No Doubt released their first album in 1992 but it wasn’t until their third, 1995’s Tragic Kingdom – which featured the huge single ‘Don’t Speak’ – that they found success. The two-and-a-half-year-long tour that came next put paid to Stefani’s college career. Tragic Kingdom sold a staggering 16 million copies and launched the front woman into the rock and pop stratosphere.

But 20 years since starting out in music, and a decade on from her arrival on the world stage, there’s another facet to Stefani’s appeal: women identify with her. She’s a pop goddess with a deluxe lifestyle but who experiences the traumas other women suffer too. For an A-list star she’s remarkably candid. ‘I try not to be but I’m super-neurotic about diet,’ she says. ‘I’m neurotic about trying not to be neurotic! I’m like every other girl. I have to try really hard my whole life to be fit. And I’m super-vain. And I want to wear cute clothes. You know, I was chubby when I was a little girl. And I have all those issues everyone else has. But I try not to. And I’ve learnt over the years that it’s such a waste of time. And people like me whether I’m a little bit fatter or not.’

Her personal life has had its fair share of dark moments too. For seven years she dated Tony Kanal, the bass player in No Doubt. Their break-up was traumatic, although it did inspire Stefani to co-write the best-selling ‘Don’t Speak’.

In 1995, she met Gavin Rossdale, then the singer with Bush, when the two bands toured together. In 2003 they were married, twice: in London and again in LA. But the relationship was, as the tabloids say, ‘rocked’ the following year by the discovery that Rossdale was the real father of the model Daisy Lowe. She’s the teenage daughter of Pearl Lowe, the singer, best friend of Kate Moss and partner of Supergrass drummer Danny Goffey. Until then Rossdale, and old friend of Pearl Lowe, had thought he was only Pearl’s godfather. The gossip magazines had a field day with the news, reporting that the upset had caused ructions between the newlyweds.

How, I wonder, does she and Rossdale’s relationship work these days, what with so much going on in their lives (he’s also embarked on a solo career, after the failure of his post-Bush band Institute)?

‘I don’t know,’ Stefani sighs. ‘It’s one of those mad love affairs that you can’t live with and you can’t live without, and you just keep going and going.’ Her smile is wide now. ‘And time goes by and you get the rocky times then you get the intense love times, then you get the reward of having the baby. It’s just this ongoing saga. I don’t know,’ she repeats. ‘I’m interested to see what’s going to happen next, you know?

I ask her what’s on the horizon. ‘Make babies, make music,’ she grins. ‘I’m on repeat mode.’ Just before flying to the UK she had lunch in Los Angeles with the rest of No Doubt. ‘It would be ridiculous to say there was no tension. Because my solo career has been going on and on. It was never supposed to be this long…’ But at last, having delivered two albums in quick succession, she’s ‘really inspired’ to go back and work with the band.

But before all that, the Sweet Escape Tour 2007 must travel around the world. If she was apprehensive during our London rendezvous she didn’t show it. For one thing, it won’t be as tough as her first solo tour, which she undertook even though she knew she was pregnant. Extra panels were sewn into her costumes to disguise the bump.

‘It was hell on earth.’ she confesses. ‘But to look out and see girls from the age of eight to 15 in the front row – who obviously didn’t know that I was pregnant even though I was feeling like a big fat huge whale – they were looking at me like I was Cinderella. And it was so… amazing. So rewarding.

‘But it’s really going to be easier this time, because I have two whole records to choose from, and I have the experience of doing a more theatrical show. And I won’t have a baby in my stomach!’

Her desire to start a family was well known – so much so the ‘tick tock’ motif in ‘What You Waiting For?’ was widely believed to represent her biological clock going into overdrive. But what, I wonder, was her biggest fear about motherhood?

‘Hmm,’ she ponders. ‘How I would fit him into my life? Would I be too self-obsessed to be able to care about him enough? I have a really extraordinary life and I obviously have a lot of passion about the things that I do. So I didn’t know if I could be selfless enough. But obviously I can! It’s the most amazing thing that’s ever happened to me.’

Around about now, Gwen Stefani will be coming off stage in Adelaide and Kingston James McGregor Rossdale will be waiting for her on the tour bus. ‘If I had to leave him at home and not bring with me everywhere then I wouldn’t do this,’ Gwen Stefani told me, ‘I know that it’s not going to last, and he’s going to get more demanding and there will be school and stuff. But for now I get to do it all.’

California dreamer Gwen Stefani has proven that she’s much more than “just a girl in the world.” Here the pop icon, new mom, and fashionista gets real about her baby, her band, and living in a bubble.

It’s Friday night in N.Y.C. when Gwen Stefani enters the conference room at the Ritz-Carlton, where I’ve been waiting for over an hour. There aren’t fireworks or rounds of applause or any big fanfare – actually, it’s not much different than when I entered the room, except that she’s Gwen Stefani and, well, I’m me. Her platinum hair is perfectly coiffed; her eyelashes are thick with mascara. She’s wrapped up in a long black coat that she seems to be getting lost in, and she’s holding her seven-month-old son, Kingston, who is decked out in a L.A.M.B onesie. It’s exactly what I imagined that scene would be like.

She sits down next to me and puts Kingston on the table; he smiles at me and I smile back, tempted to pinch his chubby baby cheeks. Gwen hands him off to his nanny and says she’ll see him in a bit. I feel a pang of guilt knowing I’m the reason for the handoff. She seems tired, leaning her head on her hand as we began to talk. Not surprisingly, she’s just as down-to-earth as she’s said to be. She doesn’t act like a rock star but more like an excited artist inspired by life. She reminds me of my friends.

It’s hard to imagine that it’s been almost 20 years since Gwen started her musical career, as a teenager singing backup vocals for her brother’s band in Anaheim, CA. In the years since, she’s succeeded in gaining widespread commercial success fronting No Doubt, as well as receiving numerous awards, but she’ll be the first to tell you, it’s still surreal. In 2002 Gwen married her long-time boyfriend, Gavin Rossdale, singer of British band Bush. A year later, L.A.M.B, Gwen’s clothing label, premiered with a line of bags by LeSportsac. That same year, No Doubt put out The Singles, a best-of record featuring songs from 1992-2003. With the band on a break, Gwen saw her chance to put out a solo record. In 2004, she released Love. Angel. Music. Baby, an ’80’s-inspired dance record. Then in May 2006, she gave birth to her first child, Kingston James McGregor Rossdale. With her second solo record, The Sweet Escape, out now, an upcoming world tour in April 2007, the Gwen Stefani Fashion Dolls, and two clothing lines – L.A.M.B and Harajuku Lovers – this 37 year old is only getting started, providing a bit of fireworks for old fans and new ones along the way.

When I asked one of the hardest working gals in showbiz questions about her life, music, and projects, she replies with well thought-out answers pulled quickly from her “I know exactly what to say” file. It makes me wonder if she’s protecting a secret or just protecting herself. She knows what we want to hear, and she says it. She’s not one to talk trash or start trouble. Gwen Stefani is happy being a good girl with perfect hair and perfect teeth. She doesn’t care what you say and, really, I love her for that.

Since this interview is going to appear in BUST’s “Love” issue, what are you lovin’ these days?
Well, everything I love has to do with that guy that was just in here. It’s really hard to focus on anything else. I really love having him in my life. It’s so insane, ’cause it makes everything so much funner, as you can imagine. Do you have any babies?

No. But I have a niece. She’s six. She’s rad.
I understand that, ’cause I have my niece who’s 11 now. She lived with me from when she was 2 until she was 5. And now, I have a nephew that’s 2 1/2. But when they’re yours and come out of your stomach, it’s really crazy.

Do your niece and nephew get along with Kingston?
Um, everybody’s obsessed with him.

Yeah? [laughs]
Like, we were sitting down at dinner the other night, and my stylist and hairdresser were trying to tell me how much they love him, and my video girl that makes my videos – they’re all, like my best friends – they’re like, “But you don’t understand, I don’t know why I love him so much,” and starting to cry.

Awwww!
And I’m like, “I know, it’s so crazy!” And then we’re all kind of crying about how much we love him. And we don’t really know why. Just that he’s so great. And he has such a great personality.

So, will there be more?
I hope so. You know, I was always worried about how I was going to fit [having babies] in.

Is is hard?
It’s definitely hard, but it’s nothing like I thought it would be. He’s just so chilled out and he goes everywhere with me, and I’m really lucky, because I have a job where I can take him everywhere, and it doesn’t matter. Like, I could have kept him in here with us if I really wanted to, but it would probably be distracting…

[Laughs]
…so, I was, like, I’ll get [the interview] done and then go have my hamburger upstairs with him. But I’m just really lucky, ’cause I can take him everywhere with me, and I have a nanny that can help me. If I had a job where I had to leave him somewhere and then go to work, that would be really hard. I wouldn’t wanna do that.

What do you think is the most important thing to teach him?
You know, I feel like I’m in this mode right now of trying to live in the moment. Gavin and I always wondered about things like, when are we gettin’ married? Where are we gonna live when we get married? If we have kids, where are we gonna raise ‘em? If I have a baby, how will I fit him into my life? But what I’m learning is to not to worry about those things and just let it happen. So, I’m not gonna think right now about what I’m gonna teach my son, I’m just gonna take everyday and love him, and let him have as much fun as he can. You can’t predict the future, but obviously, I also want him to be a good person. I never thought my life would be like this. I always just thought I’d end up being a mom and having kids. I mean, I do worry about “How will my life affect his life?” and I wonder if he’ll look back at me and think, “What a weird mom I had,” you know what I mean? [laughs]

What was growing up like for you?
I had a rad, super, really cool family. My parents met in high school. They fell in love. All they ever wanted was to have four children. And they had four children: two boys, two girls. Catholic. Everything was about us – every project, every weekend, every holiday. So I was really blessed. Also, my parents were really creative; my mom sewed, my dad did music.

So is that how you got into sewing? I know that you used to make your own clothes back when you first started No Doubt…
[I was sewing] before No Doubt, even. Like, my whole life. My mom made my clothes when I was a little girl, so every time we would have something come up, we’d go to the fabric store. We’d pick out the patterns, material, zippers, and buttons.

Does your mom still sew?
Well, she made Kingston one outfit so far. It’s this little outfit she makes for all the grandkids. Like, it’s not a christening outfit, but you know, it’s a cute little white thing.

So your mom’s a role model, obviously.
Oh, yeah. I guess you’d say my mom would be the one person that I look up to. She’s an amazing person.

What does she think of your life? I mean, I guess she’s used to it, by now…
You never get used to it.

Are you used to it?
Oh, no. You never get used to it. You still go, “Woah, this is crazy.”

Right, and you can’t just go like, “Oh, no. We’re out of milk. I’m just gonna run to the store.”
Yeah, it’s gotten kind of weird in that way. But the thing that I’ve been really lucky about is that it’s taken years to get to that. I mean, I started in about ‘87! In the ’80s!

Crazy.
So like, I’ve been doing this forever. And the first nine years, I was just a big fish in a small pond. It wasn’t until I was 26 that we started having commercial success, so it was this gradual kind of thing, over this long period of time. But it has gotten kind of crazy on a different level, recently, with the baby and everything. I mean, I’ve always had paparazzi at my house, but not at that level where they’re there every single day, in lawn chairs waiting for me. It was, like, really to another level.

You have some pretty serious fans. Is it more guys or girls?
I have more of a girl audience, which is really awesome. The one thing that got me through my whole pregnancy tour was seeing those girls from around age 8 to 14 at their first concert. I look out and I see myself in ‘em, and there’s just something about that. I just always have this place in my heart for that age, you know, where you’re just getting into music and you’re getting into your style and defining who you are through what you’re into.

What were you like at that age?
In eighth grade, I was chubby, and my little sister, my brother, and I were just getting into Madness and discovering England, all the ska music – Fishbone, and the Untouchables, and the Specials, the Selector, Bad Manners. My friends and I were into that music, so that defined our group of people. I thought we were really cool ’cause we had that. We knew that we were not part of the popular group, but we didn’t care, because we were into this [music]. I loved that time period. It defined who I was.

I read somewhere that Courtney Love was talking about how you were such a good girl and you have a good-girl image. Is that true? Do you have a bad girl side?
No, I’ve always been pretty much a goody two shoes. I never saw the point of trying to be bad. I want to be a good person. I just like being creative and making things. I don’t wanna be a drug addict. I don’t wanna miss part of my life because I did that.

Do you consider yourself a feminist?
Well, I’d have to get a definition of it, first. I mean, I’m pro-woman, and I feel like I’m in an exceptionally lucky position being in an all-guy group and being able to do music. And clearly, I work with a lot of women — my video directors, my stylists, my management. Working with L.A.M.B and all the people around me, I definitely have been able to see the power of my position. So I guess I don’t want to say I am a feminist because nobody will ever define it for me.

Do you think women play an important part in rock?
It seems like rock is pretty much nonexistent at the moment and pop and hip-hop have taken over, and in the hip-hop world, I see that it’s been very male-dominated. The pop world is pretty much female-dominated, but it’s embarrassing, you know? I love pop music, and I’m very easily entertained. And I’m not very hypercritical, but there’s a lot of really bland, manufactured, disgusting stuff out there.

Like what?
I’m not going to give you specifics. I’m no good girl if there’s bashing on people.

What do you think about the critics calling your new record “pop fluff?”
They’re exactly right. It’s called The Sweet Escape. That was the idea. I didn’t want this process to be painful. I made [the album] right after I had the baby, and some of it I did when I went down to work with Pharrell, which was like a year ago. When I was doing those songs, there was really no direction; there wasn’t anything so deep, it was just the idea of dance music. Although I did end up writing “Orange County Girl” because I was thinking, “Flying first class into Miami to work with one of the greatest producers of modern times — how the fuck did I get here?” Like how did this happen to me? How can I be so lucky?

Do you write all your own songs?
I’m part of every single song. When I came out with both of these records, I told everybody they weren’t solo records, because they’re collaboration records. What happens is, you go in and they’ll have a track for you, and sometimes there’ll be a hook, meaning a chorus or a melody for a chorus. Most of the time, it’s the words I’m doing on these records. And the idea is to just go in and collaborate. It’s hard on your ego, especially if you’re used to doing the whole thing yourself or with a band. But there’s also something great about being part of collaboration.

This might be shit-talkin’ but I read on a blog somewhere that someone said that Fergie is totally biting your style. Agree? Disagree?
You know, I took Black Eyed Peas on my last tour, and she’s a really nice girl, and if she bit anything off of me, it would be a compliment.

That’s a great answer.
But it’s the truth. I have seen a bit of wake from the last album – of things that happened [that seem to be] inspired by [it] – and it’s a really incredible feeling. It really is inspiring to me, because it makes me move forward. I’m not saying, “She did that and I’m moving on” or anything, I’m just saying that anything that happened after that record is inspiring me to move forward.

How do you handle the critics?
The thing is, I never do anything for anyone but myself. It’s very selfish. I don’t do anything unless I’m completely passionate about it, so what can you do? You put stuff out there, and they’re always gonna say something negative. There’s just no way around it. And, sometimes when they get it so wrong, I’m like “That’s so wrong. That was so not the way I intended for you to see it.”

What about the stuff that Margaret Cho wrote on her blog about the Harajuku Girls being a racist stereotype. How do you not let that hurt you?
It didn’t hurt me. It made me embarrassed for her, because she did not do the research. She’s totally wrong. Basically, if you look at the lyrics of “Harajuku Girls,” all it is is me glorifying a culture and saying how great and how stylish and how much of a fan I am of these girls and how inspired I am. And if you go to my website, HarajukuLovers.com, you can see interviews with all the girls talking about where they came from, who they are. They inspired my entire last album. The whole thing was my fantasy come true. It’s an art project. She embarrassed herself. She needs to go back and do the research before she talks shit.

When you’re at home and it’s just you and your family, what’s home life like?
I don’t have a lot of spare time. Like, if you want a day-in-the-life kind of thing, I’ll wake up with my baby and nurse him. I’m still nursing, so that’s one way that I get to make sure that we’re always together. Then I go and have to work out, which I hate doing, and I do it because it makes me feel good. And then it’s e-mails and we’re just there at the house. There’s never any real free time. I mean, like tonight after this [interview], I’ll go back up to the hotel room and I’ll have my hamburger, and I’ll play with Kingston, and we’ll go to sleep.

Are you gonna take Kingston on tour? Does Gavin go on tour also?
We haven’t fully figured that out yet. I mean, Gavin did go out on the last tour, but it wasn’t for very long. Kingston will probably come out to a lot of it, I’m sure. Gavin is working on a record right now, too. We’re kind of used to being apart from each other. Something kind of makes it good, ’cause when you have time apart, you have time to be yourself and be creative and be selfish, and then when you have time together, you get to be excited about each other. I think it’s kind of a good for the relationship.

Do you ever face temptations when you’re on the road? I mean, do you have groupies?
Oh, you mean all the guys that wanna get with me and wanna marry me? I don’t really have that problem. Never have.

What about Gavin? I’m sure he has groupies.
Well, Gavin’s always gonna be a chick magnet. And I always have to have a gun right in my pocket, just in case. [laughs]

Do you have any crazy stalker fans?
I don’t, really. I’ve been living in a bubble, you know what I mean? I just moved to a new house that has a gate behind a gate, because it was just getting out of control at my other house; you couldn’t really go anywhere. Now that I’m in the new house, my life’s a little more normal again, because I can go places and there’s not 100 cars following me, you know what I mean? It’s not the people that make it weird; it’s the paparazzi that make it weird. It’s nothing that I’m complaining about, ’cause it’s just part of it and it’s not gonna be forever. It’s just a moment, but it’s more normal now that I have more privacy in that house.

Are you living in California?
We have a place in London, too, ’cause when we met, [Gavin] had that place, and we just go back and forth. But mostly we’re in LA, especially since the baby. But you know, I’m really busy most of the time. When I’m not doing music, I’m designing, and I work a lot out of the house. I don’t really go that many places. And I really like it. I really like what I do. Like I said, I usually try to work out every day, and then I have my meetings, and everyone comes to me. So like, you know, they come over, and all the bags that I just designed will be spread all over the house. We fix them, we talk about it, we create the next ones. And the meetings go by like that [snaps], and Kingston will be sitting on my lap. We’re playing and ordering lunch from Jerry’s Deli and everybody’s over and it’s superfun. Next thing you know, four hours have gone by, and then I have to do e-mail.

What do you do to chill?
I like to lie in bed and watch movies and eat. I don’t cook, but Gavin cooks. And we just like that kind of stuff, chilling out like that. Just hanging out and eating and watching TV and playing with the baby.

I remember No Doubt had a Vans shoe. Is there gonna be a Gwen Stefani Vans shoe?
Well, there’s the tennis shoe that L.A.M.B did that are really cool. I just came from the L.A.M.B showroom, and there were big boards up of all the fantasy clothes that I’d ever want, and then you just try to convince everyone on the team that they’re gonna be great, and then we make ‘em. And I’m also developing a fragrance. This is it. See if you can smell it. [holds out wrist]

Ooh, I can.
It’s really amazing to be able to do a fragrance. The creative process has been so fun. Yesterday we had this long meeting with “the nose” – the chemist that develops the fragrance. You smell all these different versions and my friends will come and I’ll be like “Spray this one, spray that one, which one do you like?” This is all day long. You keep trying to get that right smell – “Add a little more of this, add a little more of that.” It’s a weird, creative process.

Cool.
That’s just everything outside of music, which to me is the thing that defines who I am, that really makes me most proud. The other stuff is just fun. It’s creative, but not emotionally draining and exhausting. It’s kind of like making cookies.

With thanks to Jenny Fowler at Beacon-Street.net