Having just come off a world tour promoting her record-breaking solo career and right before she steps into the studio with her old cohorts No Doubt, singer Gwen Stefani is flying too fast and bright to slow down. It’s safe to say that Stefani has become one of the gods of today’s pop music world, with plenty of devoted followers. Welcome to Gwenopolis.

A few days before I’m supposed to meet Gwen Stefani in Los Angeles for this interview, I just happen to run into her in a Virgin Megastore. Not surprisingly, Gwen is striking-movie-star blonde, impossibly big brown eyes, impeccable style. She also happens to be standing in a clear plastic box and is approximately 12″ tall. It’s the “Hollaback Gwen” doll, a fascinating (and, in this case, adorable) barometer of fame. It’s one thing to acquire international pop-star status, your own fashion empire, a level of wealth unimaginable to most humans, and what appears to be an enviable level of domestic bliss (right after this interview took place, Stefani indeed became pregnant with a second child). It’s quite another to actually see yourself immortalized in toy form.

When the real Gwen Stefani strolls onto the patio of The Beverly Hills Hotel a few days later, it’s easy to see how she might inspire the creation of a whole fleet of impossibly big-eyed dolls. Just home from a massive world tour in support of two hit solo records-2004 Love.Angel.Music.Baby and 2006’s The Sweet Escape – Stefani has none of the pretense or guardedness that one might expect from someone at the top of their game. Most pop stars coming down from more than a year on the road would probably be on an exotic, well-deserved vacation, but Stefani is happy to spend some time “being a real person again” in LA – which for her means running errands, working on her fashion line L.A.M.B., and spending quality time with musician Gavin Rossdale and their almost 2-year-old son, Kingston. Being a real person again also means getting back to the business of being a rock star. Rather than rest on the laurels of her newly established solo career, Stefani is also gearing up to re-enter the studio with her old band No Doubt. She’s so casual and friendly, it’s easy to forget that the woman sitting across the table just happens to be a globe-trotting supermom who has sold upward of 30million records and has one of the most recognizable faces in the world. This is why people love Gwen Stefani. More than just pretty and talented, she is someone you might actually want to know-the kind of sweet California girl who still loves makeup and old thrift stores, and isn’t afraid to admit she occasionally plays with dolls…even the ones created to look exactly like her. T.Cole Rachel

The last time you were on the cover of V was in 2004. No Doubt was on hiatus, and you were anxiously putting the finishing touches on a little solo project…
Wow, has it been that long? So much has happened since then. It’s so odd that we’re having this conversation today. I’ve only been home from my world tour for a few days and earlier this afternoon I had to go and finalize my will. So, it’s like this one big chapter of my life came to an end, and then I had to come home and basically take stock of my entire life. Like, now what? It’s a really strange time.

Were you shocked by the response to your first solo album, Love.Angel.Music.Baby and then The Sweet Escape?
You know what shocks me the most? It really was just this goofy thing that I did on a whim. Like, why not make a silly dance record just for fun? No Doubt was going on a break, and I wanted to record a few songs to see what would happen. I could have easily not made a solo record. It was purely the result of following my heart.

Did the experience of making these two records outside of No Doubt change the way you write songs and make music?
I still feel like writing the songs is the hardest thing I’ve ever done and also the most rewarding. I love designing things and I love the creative process involved with that as well, but there’s so much more magic involved in making a song. You never remember how to do it or how you did it before, but when you emerge at the end with this song… it’s literally like magic. I mean, I hate the process most of the time and it’s so daunting to think about going back into the studio to make a record. But a good song will still be around after you’re dead and gone. It’s permanent. Still, going in to work with all of those really talented people… I just felt like such an asshole. Like, I don’t know what I’m doing and I don’t really play an instrument and suddenly I ‘m in a room with Dre and Pharrell and Andre 3000. It was the most intimidating experience of my life. Obviously I’m glad I did it though.
[Laughs] I don’t know yet how this will affect my creative process with No Doubt but I’m sure it will in some way.

“Hollaback Girl” was also the first song in the states to sell a million copies as a digital download. That’s crazy, girl.
Pretty historic, right? Me and Pharrell were just like, Yeah!

The experience of touring on your own must have felt strange too, not to have the band up there behind you.
It was very different, but amazing. I played for over a million people and we did over a hundred shows. Because I’ve been doing this for so long I’ve had the experience of playing in front of all kinds of different audiences, but the audiences for this tour were like nothing I’ve ever seen. Success as a musician can seem really abstract until you actually go out on tour and see the crowds. Even then, it’s hard to grasp it somehow… walking out on a stage in front of thousands of people every night and realizing that this is their big night out and they’ve bought a ticket to see YOU. Every night I’d go through the same thing – “I’m too tired, I don’’t want to put these tights on, I can’t sing, I don’t wanna get ready.” Except for putting my makeup on-which I always enjoy – I’d just dread it. Then you walk out on stage and see the way people react and what the songs mean to them and it’s just incredibly rewarding. Every night I’d run out through the audience and have some kind of hands-on experience with the fans… and I mean that literally. I actually have scars from doing that. I love it. Plus I had nine costume changes! I’m not like Cher or Madonna – it wasn’t that huge of a production – but still I wouldn’t do nine costume changes in a No Doubt show.

So the boys in No Doubt weren’t pissed when you were out on the road for so long?
They have been very supportive and cool about it. I mean, they’ve been my friends since I was 16. They knew I’d come back and do another No Doubt record, plus they were all busy as well. It’s not like they were just waiting around for me to come back. They actually went into the studio ahead of me to start working, so I don’t even know how much material is going to be waiting for me when I go in to start playing with them. We did a photo shoot together as soon as I got back from the tour. I was like, let’s get together and take a picture before my body gets destroyed by this next baby that I want to have. [Laughs]. It was also a nice way for us to get together and do something as a band. It was a little weird, but we looked really cute. Now we just have to make the record.

No Doubt has been a band for twenty years now.
What? Do we have to say that? Can’t you just tell people that we’re a brand new band? You know, this hot new band called No Doubt. Check them out.

You should be flaunting it! Very few bands last that long. Still, the musical landscape has changed a lot since the last No Doubt record came out in 2001.
Yes, for sure. It’s daunting for us, but it’s also liberating. I feel like all our records are very different from each other and we’ve never really fit into a specific category. We evolved a lot from record to record, but it always still sounds like us. It’s weird that way. There’s a certain chemistry between us that can’t be faked. We don’t have the same sorts of problems that we used to have. We’ve grown up. I think this record could be the most inspired thing we’ve ever done as a band.

In No Doubt it’s not you calling all the shots.
Yeah, it’s back to the democracy of being a band. I’m like, Are you serious? I’m voting right now?

This is such an obvious question, but did your life feel radically changed after having Kingston?
I don’t feel like I really changed all that much. Kingston didn’t really change me so much as he just has made my life better. he makes me so happy. It’s hard to imagine until you have a child of your own. It’s just one of those miraculous human things that you have to experience for yourself. God, I’m gonna start crying when I talk about this because it’s just so.. it’s so intense. I put him to sleep at night and you know, I’ll be rocking him to sleep and he’ll be playing with my hair and… it’s just the most amazing feeling in the world. To have this little guy who loves me so much automatically, its just crazy. I’ll put him to bed and then, you know, enjoy having the quiet time when I can do stuff like go online and check my e-mail, hang out with Gavin, whatever, but when I find myself thinking that I can’t wait for him to wake up again so we can play. My favorite time of the day now is six-thirty in the morning. We all get up and spend the morning together. Now, you can ask Gavin and he’ll tell you that I am a sleepaholic. I love to sleep. If you had ever told me that I’d be waking up at six in the morning and enjoying it – for any reason – I would have never believed you. The last time I got up that early on a regular basis was when I was in high school! So yes, he’s changed my life. I have to be more protective of my time now. I have to be more organized. But those aren’t bad things to be, you know?

Do you ever find yourself having total Momzilla moments, where you suddenly realize, oh my God, I have become the crazy mom screaming about organic carrots at the grocery store?
[Laughs] Not too much. I think you start to relax after a while. I think we’re super relaxed about everything compared to other people with kids that we see. You realize that they are going to grow up and make messes and whatever. You can’t be psycho about it. Still, I understand the whole crazy mom thing because after you have kids you want them to have the best things-even if it’s the perfect organic carrot-because you love them so much. It just happens. Everyone should become a little bit crazy over their kid because kids deserve it. It’s the greatest thing that’s ever happened to me and I’ve had a lot of great things happen to me. And yes, I definitely want to have more.. and it’s fun trying to get pregnant.

How do you juggle the music career, the family, and the fashion stuff?
It’s tough. you know. I’m going into my fifth year now of doing L.A.M.B and it’s like a full time job. Sometimes I’m afraid that I’m going to get tired from my own fashion line if I don’t do what I’m supposed to. There are days when all I want to do is relax and the baby will be asleep and even though I just want to do nothing I know that unless I do my work, no one else can do their work. So, I’ll tell Gavin to sit tight and I’ll spend the next few hours looking at old patterns online – which, bu the way, is my favorite thing in the world to do. Looking through old patterns, going to thrift stores. Visiting costume warehouses. I love it.

You’ve always had a very defined sense of style, even from the earliest days of the band. Now that you have this successful clothing line and are looking at as a style icon, do you find that you have to be more protective of your image?
Not really. I’ve always been in total control of my image and how I’ve been presented. No one ever told me how to dress or that I need to be more sexy or more fashion-y or whatever. For the longest time, I didn’t even let anyone else do my makeup or hair. To be honest, my sense of style isn’t insanely premeditated. I don’t really worry about it or think hard about it… usually it just happens. I’ll accidentally curl my hair a certain way. Sometimes I’ll see a girl in the audience who is copying my look but rocking it way better than I ever could and that will inspire me. I get inspired by everything around me. I was always the little girl locked in the bathroom putting on makeup, singing and getting a million burns from the curling iron. I’m still that girl.

As far as media attention goes, you and Gavin seem to fare pretty well. I don’t see gossip mags predicting your divorce every five minutes like they do with some celeb couples.
It’s just so weird that people feel free to comment on your marriage I guess we all do it, but it’s usually in regard to someone that we actually know. For complete strangers to weigh in on my private life is incredibly weird to me. As for me and Gavin… you know, we fell in love twelve years ago and we have had the rockiest, craziest, most amazing relationship. It’s sort of a miracle, actually. We work very hard at it. Plus, you know having a baby is just about the most romantic thing in the world you can do with somebody. We were together so long before we had him and he’s such a funny blend of us. We’re really lucky and very blessed but not because it isn’t difficult. Gavin is awesome. Oh god, what a quote… he’s awesome!

So, I was walking around the Virgin Megastore in New York and discovered that they had this huge island of Gwen Stefani mechandise – a total Gwenopolis right in the middle of the store.
Wait, did you say ‘Gwenopolis’? Can you please make sure that goes in this story? Actually, I want that. My next solo record is totally going to be called Gwenopolis.

Well, I’m looking at all the stuff – Harajuku Lovers bags, unauthorized Gwen Stefani biographies, DVD’s- and I picked up one of the Gwen Stefani dolls. As I’m holding the doll in my hands, I look over and I notice that the person standing across from me is Chris Rock. He’s the only other person around in the entire store and he totally clocked me playing with the Gwen Stefani doll!
Are you serious?

Well, it got me thinking about all the various celebrities who have their own doll. It’s a pretty elite group. I mean, it’s one thing to be famous, but to have a doll…
Yeah, it really takes it to the next level. Let me tell you, it was a long difficult creative process creating those dolls. The outfits are exact replicas of what I wore onstage for the tour… the shit is crazy. Plus, they’d bring all these doll head mock-ups of my face over to my house and I’d be talking about how the eyebrows needed to be thinner…

That has to be one of those moments when you step back for a second and think, My life is insane. This is insane.
Uh-huh. But you know, I was one of those girls who played with Barbies a lot as a kid. A lot. So strangely enough it didn’t feel that weird ot me. It was like a fantasy. The funny thing is that they keep sending them to me, so now I have a bunch of them at my house that I don’t know what to do with. I don’t want people to come over and think I just keep dolls of myself scattered around the house. That would be crazy.

New album? New tour? A possible No Doubt reunion in the near future? No problem. But this time around, Gwen Stefani’s got a baby on board.

Gwen Stefani wanted to be sure that her return from a between-albums hiatus was going to be, well, a wind-up. “I was thinking about how you disappear and come back, and I’m kind of coming back from being gone a minute,” Gwen hollas back over dinner at hip London eatery, Nobu. “The idea was to focus on the word ‘escape.’ I started thinking about the idea of Houdini. His whole gimmick was that his wife used to kiss him and pass the key through her mouth to him, and he would escape from his traps.”

Pry as we might, we can’t exactly confirm whether Gwen and husband Gavin Rossdale [Ed: Swoon!] are well-practiced in such techniques themselves, but we do know one thing she can’t escape from: her status as the coolest California Girl in popular music.

While we here at Instinct don’t throw the two words “gay icon” around lightly, loyal readers know that not only is Gwen one of three total females to grace the cover of our prestigious circular, she’s the only one to do so twice. Draw from that what you will.

But thrilled as she is with this honor, Gwen’s got a crowded laundry list of chores to busy herself with after dinner; Album promotion! L.A.M.B. fashion shows! Baby Kingston! The Harajuku Girls! so let’s get to the inquiries.

Between its nod to Japanese fashion culture and retro, legwarmer beats and melodies, Gwen Stefani’s first solo album, 2004’s Love. Angel. Music. Baby., seemed to hit shelves-and iTunes-at the right time. Not only did it go on to sell seven million copies, but it’s pom-pom-shakin’ sass anthem, “Hollaback Girl,” became the first million-selling digital single. But Gwen’s not one to go down the same road again.

“All my inspirations were completely different on this record,” she says. “On the last one it was all about the 80s-inspired dance music-the music I danced to growing up. But this time, I was over all that and felt like I was in a whole different place. I called the record The Sweet Escape, which is basically a song on the album. But it was a perfect name for the album because the music takes you away, and it’s definitely a dancey, poppy, sugar-coated set of just delicious ear candy.”

INSTINCT: Somehow, a wig seems to have found its way atop your head lately.
GWEN STEFANI: The visual theme is all inspired by Michelle Pfeiffer’s character in Scarface-very glam, straight-angled-cut blonde bangs with the big eyegear. Also, my new logo is basically a “G” that looks like a wind-up key. It also kind of looks like a guitar. We kind of play on that whole [Houdini] story, with it basically being the key to getting off the dance floor.

Speaking of gear and accessories, where’s the love with L.A.M.B., your fashion line, Gwen? There’s not a darned thing for us boys to wear! You can’t forget the boys! I didn’t mean to leave the boys out.
I will definitely speak to my team about that. You’ll be the first to know. Look out!

Hmmm. Anyway, you worked with the incredibly dashing Tim Rice-Oxley-the keyboardist from Keane-on The Sweet Escape.
I wrote “Early Winter” with Tim, who I love. I discovered [Keane's] first record when it was given to me. I was actually sent a couple tracks from them for my last record. Do I want these tracks? I was kind of like, I don’t know. At the time, it just didn’t feel right. But this time around, I just really wanted to have a ballad on this record, you know? I know this sounds funny, but I wanted to write “Eyes Without A Face” by Billy Idol, or, like, “Killing Me Softly” or “Time After Time” by Cyndi Lauper. So I got together with Tim, who’d never written outside of his group before. I can describe him like Superman. He looks like Clark Kent. He’s really handsome, but in a subtle kind of way. We wrote three or four songs together, and “Early Winter” was the one that I liked. It’s beautiful and it’s so addictive. I’m very lucky to have worked with him.

Let’s talk about this sample of “The Lonely Goatherd” in your new single, “Wind It Up.”
It’s just a dream I’ve always had. The Sound Of Music is one of my favorite, favorite movies of all time, and one of my biggest inspirations is Julie Andrews. I don’t know, something about that film, it’s just touched me over the years, and so I’ve referenced it a million times for other things. I did a whole session with [producer] Pharrell [Williams] about a year ago, and we wrote four tracks that were all amazing. The first one was “Wind It Up.” I took the track and, against his will [Laughs], had a friend of mine do a remix with a mashup between The Sound of Music and “Wind It Up.” I actually cried! I know that sounds ridiculous, but it was so good and so fresh and amazing.

And now you’ve single-handedly introduced a new generation to the Von Trapps!
I know a lot of people probably don’t know The Sounds Of Music, and hopefully this is my way of sharing something that I think is really great. Maybe people will go out and watch it. It’s a really good film.

Stefani, along with No Doubt-the Anaheim-based band she fronts-leapt out of the O.C. and into the homes of ten million record-buyers a decade ago. Their biggest hit implored us not to speak, but really we just couldn’t stop talking about how varied the group’s sound was.

“I grew up listening to a lot of different styles of music-everything from the LA punk scene to the local ska scene,” Gwen remembers. “Ska was a major part of No Doubt’s sound. I also remember bobbing along to pop or dance ditties I’d hear on the radio. I work really hard to try and reach into different genres, so I hope that comes through.”

Around the time of No Doubt’s early success, Stefani met Gavin Rossdale, lead singer of Brit-rock act, Bush. The two eventually married in 2002, and this past May, seven-pound Kingston James McGregor Rossdale was born in Los Angeles. Shortly after, as all brand new mothers do, she made a beeline to the studio to finish her sophomore solo album.

“I didn’t have the luxury that I had before, where I would just stay up all night,” Gwen says of the sessions. “I would go in to record and have the nanny there. She had to sit right there with the baby while I did this. I am very blessed because he’s such a chilled little guy. He’s seen me do my makeup four thousand times! He’s been in every studio in LA, every studio in New York, every studio in London. He’s been on a jet. He’s been on a helicopter. He’s been everywhere!”

And as jet-setting Kingston racked up frequent flier miles, mom finished the album, and is now preparing to hit the road yet again this April (her 2005 Harajuku Lovers tour was chronicled on a recently-released live DVD). “We’re going all over the U.S. and the rest of the world,” she says. Then, smiling toward Kingston, she adds, “This time around I’m going to bring something along that I didn’t have on the last tour.”

Let’s face it; your husband is hot! Please tell us he’s got at least one flaw.
Oh, you don’t have to tell me! He is amazing and supportive not to mention gorgeous! Also, he’s a wonderful father. What more could I ask for?

It’s been nearly six years since the last No Doubt album came out. Is there any truth to the rumors of a new project with the band in the next year?
A girl’s gotta have some secrets-wink, wink! I’m sure at some point we’ll be doing something. Right now all I can focus on is The Sweet Escape and the upcoming tour.

The last tour was your first one without the rest of No Doubt by your side. Did that affect you?
Definitely! It was a real adjustment in the beginning. I mean, I had the same guys beside me for 20 years, so it’s a totally different experience. And to some extent, it’s a different energy that you give as well as receive from the audience. But I started to find my ground and a whole other level of confidence in myself as the tour progressed. It was a real challenge, but it was also a great learning curve for me as a performer.

What can we expect from this new tour?
Complete mayhem! A lot of costume changes, of course, and just a great party. I’ve upped the crew, so there are a lot more people on stage dancing with me. I had a lot of fun auditioning the new dancers-four girls and four yummy boys! It’s really energetic and up. The production design is going to be quite elaborate.

Speaking of performing, say, for instance, you woke up one morning and realized you’re actually a drag queen, and you’ve got ten minutes before you go on stage. What’d your name, and how would your act go?
[Laughs] Hmmmm. How about Anna Heim? My act would cover a wide range of styles, from early ska/reggae classics to Broadway classics and a few ’80s dance tunes. Don’t forget the red lipstick and platinum blonde hair. Oh, and great backlighting! Always great backlighting.

Despite her hectic life, apparently flawless husband and that whole business of being a “superstar,” we still can’t shake the feeling that, at the heart of it, Gwen’s the kind of down-to-earth girl we’d love to pal around with. This leads us to wonder, Had we been BFFs roaming the halls of high school together in the ’80s, what kind of naughty shenanigans would we get up to?

“Oh, maybe hit a few clubs in the neighborhood, or maybe hang out at the house and watch one of my favorite movies,” she ponders. “I used to enjoy dancing and checking out new music while growing up. I don’t get to do that as much. Now I just love to hang out with Kingston.”

Ah, yes, Kingston, the small, cuddly reminder that Gwen Stefani is, after all, just a girl in the world. “I dedicated the album to him,” she points out, gathering her son up to leave. “I just want him to grow up and look back and to know how important he is. He’s just, like, the most delicious I’ve ever seen, I have no words for him. Isn’t he yummy?”

Both The Sweet Escape album and the Harajuku Lovers Live DVD are out now.

She’s So Unusual

GWEN ON ONE OF HER BIGGEST INFLUENCES GROWING UP:
“I would have to say Cyndi Lauper. She just blew me away. She really was unusual and unique. Aside from the great songs and the look, she gave you something that came from an outsider’s point of view. She knew what was left of center, and she made it okay for young girls like myself at that time to connect with that within themselves. I got the chance to meet Cyndi six years ago. She came to one of the No Doubt concerts at Irving Plaza in New York. Wow! What an experience!”

Platinum pop star Gwen Stefani talks about her hit addiction, yodeling fantasies, and how she kicked her Madonna habit. Now she prepares to conquer the world, with baby in tow. By Joseph Hooper.

You know the story: Blonde Italian-American pop diva, music video eminence, and all-round material girl marries a Brit artiste and moves to England. The relationship hits some bumps along the way, but a baby boy ensues and celebrity life keeps rolling. “It is weird that we have all these similarities,” Gwen Stefani allows as she nestles on a couch in one of the many rooms her entourage has taken in London’s Landmark hotel in mid-November. With a voice that hovers somewhere between sultry and Kewpie doll, the singer has a knack for sounding about seven years old: “Madonna’s had us over to dinner and stuff, and she’s always been very nice to me.”

Undeniably, there is a scale to Madge’s assault on the Old Country, everything from the horsey rural estate to the creeping mid-Atlantic accent. Stefani, by contrast, will lose her flat, half-swallowed Californian vowels when hell freezes over, and anyway, she hasn’t even truly relocated to England; she and Brit rocker husband Gavin Rossdale have for the past 10 years split their time between the house in London’s tony Primrose Hill (neighbors on either side are Jude Law and his ex, Sadie Frost) and a manse in LA. But if Madonna does it bigger, it is no longer heresy to suggest that musically, Stefani does it every bit as well. After 17 years of fronting the redoubtable rock/ska/reggae band No Doubt (she should make the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on the strength of one immortal break-up tune alone, “Don’t Speak”), Stefani took the solo plunge. Her 2004 giddy confession of dance tunes Love. Angel. Music. Baby went triple platinum. (“I remember telling Madonna I was going to do an ’80s dance record,” Stefani says, “and she rolled her eyes, because I think when you’ve lived through it like she did, she’s like ‘Whatever.’ But a lot of my influences came from her early work, like directly, like a Xerox.”) That album spawned one monster single, “Hollaback Girl,” a saucy cheerleader chant that taught teenage girls how to spell the word bananas and simultaneously established Stefani’s urban street cred as a white suburban rapper comfortable with the “S” word and with pop-hop notables the Neptunes’ marital beats.

“Gwen was always dope,” says Pharrell Williams, producer and one half of the Neptunes. “If there was an ill black record out there, she knew what is was.”

Linda Perry, the songwriter-producer who made Pink into Pink, says she barged her way onto the Stefani solo team by physically accosting the singer at the Grammy awards in 2004. “I was pokin’ her on the head,” Perry says, “and I was like, ‘Dude, you gotta give me a call for the new record.’ ”

Just last week, Stefani put the finishing touches on her new solo album, The Sweet Escape, which, if industry buzz and early radio play can be trusted, is poised to make a major impact. Less self-consciously retro than it’s prodecessor, The Sweet Escape employs the same working method as L.A.M.B; Lock Gwen up in the studio with a blurry succession of dream-team producers all vying for that one megahit (can you spell bananas?), tape everything, toss it up in the air, and see what sticks. A likely recipe for disaster (which No Doubt purists, partial to human beings playing actual drums and bass, may well judge), but it works, mostly due to Stefani’s feckless, reckless impulse to try anything that pops into her head. Nothing is more out there than the album’s first single and video, “Wind It Up” — typically sinister Neptunes beats and Stefani, backed by a symphony orchestra, singing fragments lifted from The Sound of Music’s “The Lonely Goatherd.” (Yes, that’s right: “High on the hill was the lonely goatherd/ Lay, odl ay odl ay hee hoo.”)

“Some people are freaked out by that yodel,” Stefani confides. “Either people get it or they don’t. But I’ve always had the fantasy of putting The Sound of Music to a beat. I used to quote all the songs like a geek!” (Pharrell, a famous musical minimalist, was less than convinced, but he tells me later, “I just rolled with her. I wanted her to be happy.”) Stefani’s term of art for a tune like “Wind It Up” is a “mash-up,” but, if you wanted to go all High Culture on Gwen, Dada would do as well. Marcel Duchamp has nothing on Stefani, whose brain is as adhesive as flypaper, a trap for pop-culture fragments that almost randomly catch and reassemble.

In her own mind, Gwen Stefani is the Cinderella of pop music. At any moment, it seems, the Landmark could turn into a pumpkin. “The hotel maid walked by today,” she says, “and she’s really pretty and she probably comes from Poland. And here I am about to spend a lot of money on room service and I was thinking, I could have been a maid.” Actually, Stefani grew up solidly middle-class in Anaheim, the second of four kids in a tight-knit family headed by folk-music-loving parents (dad Dennis was a Yamaha marketing executive; Patti was an accountant before becoming a full time mom.) Teenage Gwen was mad for clothes and jumped-up Jamaican-rooted ska music, then enjoying one of it’s periodic rivals. In 1987, her older brother, Eric, formed No Doubt and persuaded his bopping little sister to sing in the band and that, aside from a little college on the fly, would be her life; near-constant touring and a steady romance with the band’s bassist, Tony Kanal. The Cinderella theme kicked in big time with No Doubt’s hit third album, 1995’s Tragic Kingdom (Anaheim being home to Disney’s Magic Kingdom, after all), which transformed the Southern California party band into a pop/rock juggernaut. By then, Tony and Gwen had broken up (providing the raw material for “Don’t Speak) and Eric had decamped to become and animator with The Simpsons. But the band chugged on through 2001’s Rock Steady, by which all four No Doubt members were desperate for a break. (Kanal has since emerged as one of Stefani’s trusted solo collaborators.) As as to whether the success of solo Gwen means the end of No Doubt, Stefani says she hopes not: “I’m looking forward to going back to my little musical family and trying to write a song,” she says. But for the tween girls who are the core of her solo fan base, No Doubt, much beloved by young men, would fall squarely into the “No Clue” department.

With hubby Rossdale in LA recording with Pharrell, Stefani has turned over the London Primrose Hill house to her parents, visiting from Anaheim and eager, like the rest of the inner circle, to get some quality time with their six-month old grandson, Kingston. (“He’s pretty rad,” Kingston’s mom says.) For nine days, Stefani has moved in the Landmark with a small army of publicists and managers, transforming one of the city’s swankiest hotels into a field headquarters for the campaign of a global publicity push behind The Sweet Escape.

“I’m so exhausted,” Stefani announces as she walks into her personal assistant’s hotel room. But just because Cinderella is in a mood doesn’t mean she’s a diva. (“The ghastly thing about her is that she is a really decent human being,” says her pal Garbage frontwoman Shirley Manson.) Fame and talent aside, Stefani is the mall girl next door, one who’s very in touch with her emotions. When she’s up, she’s up, when she’s down, she cries easily, and she’s particularly sensitive in matters of personal appearance. Trailed from city to city by a retinue of hair and skin and clothes handlers who have become her intimate friends. (“They are as obsessive as I am and complete mad hatters,” Stefani says), she is still the last word on her high-glam platinum persona that evolved over a decade and a half’s worth of music videos. Today, and all-day photo shoot for another project has let her down. “I started with my hard look – my bangs – but the lighting was like Kmart – ‘Attention shoppers!’- so I had to revise.”

Post-photo-shoot debacle, Stefani has changed into a soothingly rich green tracksuit with the logo of her clothing line, L.A.M.B, running down one side in fancy gold script letters, (She has also launched a teen-friendly line, Harajuku Lovers, her homage to the style-conscious Tokyo girls who hang out in the Harajuku shopping district.) “People always say the same things,” she tells me. “That I’m smaller than they expected and that I look better in real like. Which is kind of a back-handed compliment.”

True enough. The early No Doubt Gwen, the adorable ska kid with a little baby fat, has been updated into a striking 37-year-old woman with angular features and a trim, honed physique. And then there’s the hair, which serves as a kind of Stefani mood ring, never more dramatically than in 2000 when she broke up with Rossdale (temporarily) and opted for the startling pink do that graced the cover of No Doubt’s Return of Saturn. She’s since gone back to Jean Harlow platinum, and over-the-top shade that can be seen to good effect in Martin Scorsese’s The Aviator, Stefani’s chance to play her Hollywood avatar for about three minutes of screen time, hanging off the arm of Leo DiCaprio’s Howard Hughes, (The movie experiences seems to have slacked her once-ardent film ambitions, but she says, “If Martin Scorsese called me again…”)

Hair color notwithstanding, the past four years have been anything but a cakewalk. After her 2002 marriage to her English rocker, she learned that Rossdale had fathered an illegitimate child, now a teenager, Stefani’s lyrics tend to read like blog entries from her own tumultuous Planet Relationship, so fans interpreted “Danger Zone,” off her first album, as a stinging retort: “Are your secrets where you’ve left them?/ Cause now your ghosts are mine as well.” (In this instance, the fans were wrong; the song was written before the revelation, but Stefani would be shocked by it’s prophetic resonance.)

As for the new album’s gorgeously bleak ballad “Early Winter” (“I can’t fix what you broke”), it turns out Tim Rice-Oxley from the band Keane wrote most of the lyrics and, by all accounts, Stefani and Rossdale are in a positive phase of the moon, thank you very much.) “But [that song] felt weird,” she says. “It felt like I could have lived it and I have lived it. I mean, of course me and Gavin have problems, sometimes. Everyone does. We’ve been together for over 10 years. This is, like, the real deal.” (For more on loving your man in spite of it all, consult “The Real Thing” off L.A.M.B)

In any event, she adds, it’s not like she’s going into the studio these days expressly for emotional catharsis. “I’ll never be as pure as I was when I wrote Tragic Kingdom,” she says. “Once you’ve had a hit, there’s no going back, because it’s so addictive. It’s a drug. I felt I was going back and getting more Pharrell, ‘Hollaback Girl Number 2.’” She giggles. “As you would! It’s not like being ambitious is a bad thing. And I wanted [this album] to be now, to be modern. I want it to be in the clubs. No Doubt was never in the clubs. I want to go out and hear that song pumping in the car next to me. I want bass! I want bump!”

Room service knocks and our tea arrives. “This is perfection,” Stefani says. She may be getting the hang of the England thing after all.

The next day I follow Stefani to the KISS radio station to watch her make nice over the English airwaves. It’s an entourage production, but in addition to the usual handlers we get an appearance by the beguiling Kingston Rossdale, who holds court in the waiting lounge under the watchful eyes of his grandparents. “Kingston is so chill,” Stefani says. “He goes with me everywhere, ’cause I’m still nursing. He’s been to every studio in LA, New York, London. He lives up to his name – total Rasta boy. He gives me real balance. You can go 100 miles an hour, but you still have to stop to hang out with him.” According to Manson, Stefani functions bafflingly well at top speed. “Sometimes you hang out with her and she says ‘Oh God, I had two hours of sleep last night. I was in the studio until 4 A.M. and then up with the baby at 6. Then she throws a big party at night.”

If motherhood is sweet, the pregnancy proved to be an unexpected bitch. “I thought I was going to be one of those Mother Nature girls. I figured, I’ll just squeeze it out,” she says, ” ’cause I’m really strong and I work out and stuff.” Instead, shortness of breath and a host of other physical ills made the latter part of her L.A.M.B tour a nightmare. “I would be seriously crying before I went on stage. I didn’t know how I was going to get through the tour, putting on nice costume changes on a stage in front of 12,000 people every night. And I didn’t want people to know [I was pregnant]. I didn’t want it to become the Gwen Freak Circus Show – ‘Watch it grow on stage.’ ”

Tonight, gearing up for her Sweet Escape tour, Stefani is looking the furthest thing from maternal, in a skintight sweater and clunky neck chain that I assume is a garden-variety hip-hop bling until she sets me straight. It’s a key, she says, formed by two back-to-back G’s, her “Wind It Up” key that’s featured prominently in the video with yodeling and the lonely goatherd and an allusively related Houdini subplot with a struggling Stefani shackled to a chain fence as if underwater. “In the video,” she says, “you can see the key coming out of my mouth. When Houdini used to do his tricks, his wife used to pass the key from her mouth to his mouth. It’s the sweet escape. And I was thinking, The key is the music. It all kind of ties up together.”

Whatever (as Stefani would say), it makes for a cool video. Her new fans are happy to follow her into the woolliest recesses of her imagination, entranced by the fabulous artifice, by the playful tug-of-war between her Jean Harlow and abs-of-steal personas, and by the evident fact that you can be a mega-pop star without the standard issue T & A pander (especially about a zillion preteen girls who take their uncomplaining dads to her concerts.) Something about Gwen Stefani seems to reconcile opposites – humble celebrity, femme jock, surrealist material girl – and has ever since the early No Doubt days when she was the girl in the guys’ band touring the rock dives of America in a van. “I would ‘go off’ in the mosh pit,” she says, “but I was always very glamorous before I dove in.”

She’s got a wardrobe of to-die-for clothes and gets to spend all day making music with Pharrell. We tracked Gwen down and demanded to know why she’s so cool.

Hey Gwen! How are you?
“I’m good, thanks for asking!”

You’ve been so busy. We love the Wind It Up video.
“Thanks. It’s so cool looking. I remember when I was a little girl and I saw The Sound of Music. It was such an inspiration to me. My folks wouldn’t let me watch Grease when it came out… but I did see that and it changed my life. I was able to indulge my theatrical side!”

We haven’t stopped playing your new album either…
“Well, when I started thinking about this project, I was like, ‘I want to work with Keane, Akon and Pharrell.’ It wasn’t as hard as my first album. I thought that was going to be a really fun, easy project I could do and put out in a couple of months. But it turned into this super-hard, life-challenging, long, drawn-out thing. On the first day, I went to the studio and cried!

Aww! You’ve been performing Wind It Up on tour, so everyone has had a sneak preview of it. How come it’s a single now?
“There were lots of songs that sisn’t make the first album, because Pharrell and I just had so many tracks. I was going to put out two albums at the same time, but it didn’t work out. So, when it came to the second album, Pharrell and I went into the studio again to record some of them, and wrote some new ones too.”

We here you recorded this CD in no time?
“It’s the quickest album I’ve ever done in my life! It’s the most modern album you’ll hear out there, because I literally did it so recently!”

How’s it different to the last album?
“Loads of Love Angel Music Baby tracks had attitude. The Sweet Escape is definitely more of an emotional album.”

You’re a total style icon and we love your look. Tell us everything.
“Well it’s easier doing media interviews on my own [without No Doubt] because if I want to talk about lipstick or fashion or girlie stuff, I can!”

Go on, then, tell us!
“Fashion is in my blood. My grandma made all my mum’s clothes and my great-gran always sewed. Then all through high school and in the band, I made my own clothes. I used to make corset-style drop-waists with a cheerleader skirt. I wore my boxer shorts, fishnets and Dr Marten boots underneath!”

Sounds a bit mad!
“It was cool to have my own style. I didn’t plan it. When I got started, I was like, ‘How can I compete with the boys, but not sweat?’ At the same time, I’m a girlie girl. I enjoy making myself up and all that stuff.”

How did your fashion label L.A.M.B start?
“My stylist Andrea and I were making so many outfits that we thought, ‘Why don’t we do a clothing line together?’ It’s every girl’s dream. We were going to do something really small and just selling our stuff at a few boutiques, and then I met this guy who said he wanted to do a clothing line with me and pay for it all. The best part was that he said I could do whatever I wanted creatively. I was like, ‘Are you kidding me? OK!’ ”

Do you get loads of time to work on the outfits?
“No at the moment! But I do spend a lot of my spare time designing. I’m passionate about L.A.M.B It’s actually beyond a dream come true for me, Because I’ve always made clothes.”

Sounds like you’ve been working really hard?
“No kidding! Come January, I’m going to hibernate, eat pizza and sleep!”

Gwen’s latest single, Wind It Up, and album, The Sweet Escape are out now!

Gwen Stefani is back. And guess what. Yup, she’s got a new look. By Dan Cairns

Okay, the hair, for starters. Gwen Stefani in the last days of 2006 has two new looks. Gone are the stacked Marie Antoinette constructions and the cascading, just-out-of-bed curls. This afternoon, in a London hotel room, she’s a rocker, and the shock-headed plume of peroxide in front of me isn’t moving an inch. Litres of lacquer have been spilt. When Stefani cocks or tilts her head, the stiff quiff remains unbending. Later, at the television studio, you could run a ruler along each perfect strand of blonde fringe, her alternate look. “Busy?” I ask her hairstylist. “Oh,” he says, his eyes rolling in their heavy mascara rims, “we’ve got lots to do.”

When she burst out of the Japanese-style wrapping last year as a solo artist with her album Love.Angel.Music.Baby, the 37-year-old Orange County singer got straight to the point. Her biological clock was ticking, she implied on the opening track, What You Waiting for?, so we’d better enjoy solo Stefani while we could. Since joining the band No Doubt in 1986 at 17, she had worked the live circuit, finally had a breakthrough hit in 1997 with Don’t Speak, then reaped every reward except motherhood. “Tick-tock tick-tock,” went the song. She was in a hurry. “I’d wanted a baby for so long,” she says. “It was all I ever thought about my whole life. Then, all of a sudden, years had gone by and it kept getting put off. And I didn’t know how it was going to fit into my life, you know?” The problem was exacerbated by the fact that, inconveniently, LAMB sold almost 6m copies, propelling Stefani to stratospheric supernova status. The world could not, it seemed, get enough of her wacky videos, her tiny attendant Japanese sidekicks, the succession of early-Madonna-inspired pop and dance singles (Rich Girl, Hollaback Girl, Cool) she unleashed on us.

Then, suddenly, she got pregnant, and found herself stricken with sickness, crying before going on stage every night, having to get her outfits taken out to hide her growing size. She and her husband, Gavin Rossdale, formerly the singer in the British band Bush (huge in America, couldn’t get arrested over here), had a baby boy, Kingston, in May this year. She’s got everything she ever wanted, right? So why is she about to release a new album? Nut-brown eyes twinkling with warmth and humour — and a tiny trace of wariness — Stefani does what famous people tend to do when you chuck them a tricky one. She throws back her head (and quiff) and gurgles with metallic laughter. It’s as if they’ve become unaccustomed to awkward questions. But all credit to her: she answers it. After a fashion.

“I definitely have an addiction to wanting to do stuff,” she begins. “I don’t know if it’s my Catholic background; the guilt. But I feel like I’ve been given so many opportunities, and what are the chances of this happening to somebody? I mean, it’s really extraordinary, my life. If anyone else was in my situation, they’d do exactly the same.” She’s remarked before on the prurience and invasiveness of the British press, which, as she lives some of the year in London, she’s had her fair share of. The camera lenses homed in on her when it was revealed last year that Rossdale had fathered a child in the 1980s with the doyenne of the Primrose Hill set, Pearl Lowe. When Stefani herself became pregnant, the paps all but moved into her home.

“I got caught up in the whole celebrity-pregnancy thing,” she sighs. “For an entire year, I had people outside my house, waiting for me to come out. I am like everyone else who enjoys a bit of nasty gossip. Like, don’t let me open one of those magazines, because I can’t put them down. We’re all addicted to it; it’s gross, but it’s entertaining. But I’m the one who has to live it. In LA, there would be mornings where I’d be sleeping with my french doors open, in the heat, and I’d be woken up by chatter. I’d look out and there’d be these guys in lawn chairs, hanging out, having a coffee, ready to chase me around all day. Like, wow. Who am I? What happened? That’s a bizarre life, isn’t it?”

What marks Stefani out from the norm is that — unlike, say, the never less than melodic and macrobiotic Chris Martin — her music is as bizarre as her life. Or perhaps “bizarre” doesn’t do justice to her second album, The Sweet Escape. Its lead single, Wind It Up, is so unashamedly barking, it should be sectioned at once. It samples The Lonely Goatherd, from The Sound of Music (nice timing), and in its video, the star apes Maria: here in a habit, there at a spinning wheel, running up dresses out of curtains for her Harajuku girls, yodelling like a loon. Produced and co-written by Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo, the Neptunes, it is quite unlike anything else released this year. But is it a single? I mean, obviously, it is a single; but should it have been?

“Pharrell was like, ‘It has to be Yummy,’” Stefani says, referring to the album’s other grade-A-nutter song. “It was between the two, and I just felt Wind It Up had more of that kind of ‘da-da-da DUM’, that weird feeling, whereas Yummy is more like, if you’re in a club you’re going to get really into it, but it doesn’t have that ‘BAM’.” (She talks that way a lot, in capital letters, like a Lichtenstein painting.) A record-company bean-counter could be excused for worrying whether Wind It Up, Yummy and the other weird-outs on a gloriously unfettered album have any ‘BAM’ or ‘da-da-da DUM’ at all. Yet if that old pop formula — huge success, the wresting of artistic control, next album a flop — may apply to other artists, Stefani has form. LAMB was scarcely demure. And, while The Sweet Escape arguably lacks a track as drop-dead commercial as its predecessor’s Cool, it has an ace up its sleeve in the shape of Early Winter. Stefani co-wrote the epic weepie with Tim Rice-Oxley of Keane. She is refreshingly unstuffy about its origins.

“I really wanted a ballad on this record,” she says, “you know, like Eyes Without a Face, by Billy Idol, or Killing Me Softly, or Time After Time. I call Tim the Clark Kent of songwriting, because he’s quite, like, humble. He wears these glasses and you notice, when he takes them off, he’s actually really good-looking; and he gets in there and writes these super-unbelievable, chilling, goose-bump songs. I called him on the phone; the baby’s sitting on my lap, crying, and I go, ‘I just really want it to sound like Eyes without a Face’, like, you know, making an order for breakfast.” Room service duly delivered.

Could she stop all this? Drop the photoshoots, the red carpets, the awards, the touring, the constant merry-go-round? “If Pharrell calls me up… it’s Pharrell,” she says. “Do you know how many people want to work with that guy? Of course you’re going to reassess yourself and be, like, what’s going on? And, being a woman, you definitely start to realise there’s only going to be a certain amount of time to do this thing.” And if the success she describes as “just delicious” went belly up, beyond her control? “It’s going to end,” she says, suddenly wistful, “and it’s so sad, because it’s so fun. Anybody would want to do this. But, at the same time, I would love to not work, to just sit at home with Kingston and eat pizza. It goes so fast, before your eyes. Part of me thinks I should be at home and watch him grow.”

Up close, she has perfect skin, and — with apologies to Lloyd Cole — when she smiles your way, your eyes go out in vain. She once said that her “overall thing isn’t sexy”. Would she mind if people thought it was? “There are a lot of girls I see, and it’s like the whole idea is: look at me, I’m sexy. Anybody can do that, pretty much, if you put the right things on, or take the right things off. My image has maybe shifted a little bit more to embrace that, but I earned it, in the sense that I am now age-appropriate.” (That clock again.) For the most part, she thinks, such antics “look ridiculous. It’s like: you have time. What are you going to take off next if you take it all off now?”.

The publicist appears. There’s a TV show to film, a quiff to be chiselled into pliancy, an album to promote and a baby to breast-feed upstairs before the celebrity circus heads across London. So much to do, so little time. The mother of all maverick solo artists, Gwen Stefani is sprinting to stay still. She may be breaking records, but there are other races to be run. On your marks, get set, GO.

‘It’s a song that says you don’t have to answer back,” Gwen says. By Jennifer Vineyard

Going solo wasn’t as easy as Gwen thought it would be.

She’d originally intended to just take a break from No Doubt and make a fun little dance record. But, encouraged by her label boss and others, she’d decided to swing for the fences, and now that she was deep in it, the album suddenly didn’t seem like it was going to be all that much fun — and it definitely wasn’t going to be little.

Stranded without her longtime bandmates and plagued by writer’s block, she nervously turned to a host of producers, songwriters and musicians for creative help. This strategy proved useful, but it had a downside: The music came so easily to everyone else that it made her feel insecure — and jealous. “I’ve had a hard time with my ego,” she said, “because it gets bruised.”

After a whole year of work on the album that became Love, Angel, Music, Baby, she had 20 songs in the can. But Gwen still had a nagging feeling that something important was missing. “I could have put the record out,” she said. “I had so many songs. But I knew that I kind of had this missing vibe on the album.” And she knew she would have to find it.

Who could help her? She’d already worked with every big name she could think of — and after one bout of panic, she’d already resorted to calling in No Doubt bassist Tony Kanal.

So she decided to give it one more try with Pharrell Williams, a man she felt was on her creative wavelength, even though a tentative get-together with Williams early on in the album’s production had been a bust. “We didn’t have a great session,” she recalled. “It didn’t have the sparkle.”

This creative strikeout nagged at her. “I was like, ‘Geez, I can’t believe we didn’t end up doing something great together.’ So I called Pharrell, ‘Dude, it’s crazy that we didn’t do a track together.’ The next thing I know, I’m on a plane to New York, booked for seven days in the studio — another week of torture.”

Although she was nervous, their first day together was an immediate success. “It was like having a baby,” she said. “I went in there, it was 4 p.m., and by 11 p.m. we had a song.’ ” The next day they had the same experience, popping out another song with equal ease. “We wrote this second song, and both of us loved it. It sounded like an early, early No Doubt song.”

With two songs finished (neither of which made the album’s final track listing), a tired but happy Gwen was ready to wrap it up. “But Pharrell said, ‘Don’t leave yet.’ And he started playing me his solo record.”

Gwen’s green-eyed monster — the one with the bruised ego — nudged her in the right direction. “I was like, ‘You are a fricking genius, I can’t believe I’m sitting in here with you, right now, and you have those songs! We have got to write another song!’ ” Gwen recalled, adding with a smile, “I’m greedy!”

So the pair hunkered down to write their third song in three days. And this time, they finally found the missing vibe.

Gwen had been thinking about what some No Doubt fans might say about her solo effort. “The fans were probably like, ‘Why is she doing this record? She’s going to ruin everything,’ ” she said. “And I didn’t know why I was doing it either.”

So Stefani and Pharrell stayed up all night and came up with a reply — that Gwen didn’t have to have an answer for what she was doing, not for the fans, not for anybody. The song was, of course, “Hollaback Girl,” and it introduced a new phrase into pop culture. As Gwen recalls, “We looked at each other when we wrote that song and we were like, ‘That’s it!’ It’s a song that says, you know, you don’t have to answer back. To me, it is the freshest attitude song I’ve heard in so long.”

Pharrell was impressed. “Gwen is like the girl in high school who just had her own style,” he said. “Everyone went to high school with that girl — that girl who’s just different, right? And she’s really cute with it and you can’t really say anything about it. You just like it, and it’s her.”

Those who didn’t like Gwen and her cute style only inspired her more. “One time, this person was talking sh– about me, saying I was like a cheerleader,” she recalled, “and I was like, ‘You know what? I am a cheerleader. Watch me onstage.’ So I wanted a song like that, that was like my ‘Just a Girl’ song for now. It feels good. It’s a slap: It’s a slap on the bottom, it’s a slap on the face.”

Stefani and Williams extended her slap into a storyline, in which “Hollaback Girl” was a high school throwdown, something that could be a cheer at a football game, with fighting words, chanted lyrics, and a marching-band beat, kind of like Queen (“Another One Bites the Dust” is quoted in the song). “Pharrell had some really funny lyrics he wanted me to do,” Gwen said. “Usually I’ll come up with a lyric, and sometimes he’ll have a hook that he wrote that has a word or some lyrics already, but we’d change it because I was like, ‘I’m not saying that!’ ”

“Hollaback Girl” wound up transcending musical boundaries, leaping across all radio formats and cultural barriers and being downloaded more than a million times.

“You can feel the energy around ‘Hollaback Girl,’ ” Gwen said. ” ‘Don’t Speak’ was kind of like that. You go to different countries and they feel this song, even though they don’t know what you’re really saying. ‘Hollaback Girl’ has this feeling, this massive thing. Like: ‘You know who I am? You like my song? Cool, thanks!’ ”

Even more importantly, Stefani felt that the song was a personal triumph, proving that “if you push, you can come through with a song that captures a moment,” she said. “People can try not to like it — they can try real hard. But it’s going to be at least a guilty pleasure. Even after you die, that song will live on.”

Gwen Stefani: The singer, dancer, actress and fashion designer sees children in her near future

Gwen Stefani, 36, is doing a little short of building an empire. After achieving worldwide success with her band, No Doubt, she is making as a big a name for herself as a solo artist with her debut CD, Love. Angel. Music. Baby.

In between recording and performing, she’s found time to launch her own fashion label, L.A.M.B, and forge ahead in her acting career! But Gwen – who is married to Bush frontman Gavin Rossdale – is also starting to gear herself up for an even more demanding role – as a mother.

With your music and your clothing line, do you ever get a chance to relax?
I’ve had a few seconds to myself. It was weird, and I think that I really brought me down. I was like, “Let me go back to work; I don’t know how to deal with this.” I’m trying to live in the moment and really enjoy this wave that I’m riding.

Do you and Gavin get much time together?
For about the last three years we’ve seen a lot of each other. We’re together most days. But in the previous years, because we’ve been together nine years, there was a lot of time apart because we both were touring so much. But we try not to get too far apart or else that’s when all the disasters come! Stay close, hold hands!

What about having kids?
You know, it’s definately on my dream list. One of the big reasons I wanted to do this dance record was because I knew that my passions were going to change soon and I’m to want to have a family. But right now I’m trying to live in the moment and really enjoy this wave that I’m riding. It’s not up to me, is it? If it happens it happens, it’ll happen when… To me it’s such a miracle anyway, that when it’s suppose to happen to me, I guess it will.

Gavin is British – do you spend much time over there?
We spend a lot of time over there. We had a dog there that passed away, and being over here I think has made it easier on us because somehow it just kind of masks it a little bit.

What inspired you to take a break from No Doubt and start a solo career?
When we did the Rock Steady record, that was probably the highlight for me in the sense that we were such great friends at that point. The tour and everything about it was just so fabulous that I pictured a break was the next thing we needed to do. We have never taken a break from each other at that point. So everybody agreed and I had just gotten married. The band were so committed to each other that you kind of don’t even realize it because it’s just up passion. But it was time.

How did you tell the band?
I said to Tony [Kanal], “I really wanna frickin’ make a dance record,” because I heard a Club Nouveau song, “Why You Treat Me So Bad.” I just thought it would be a fun thing to do, and it was very innocent. Like, Tony would be part of it, we would do it in his studio at his house, and it would just be this thing we were going to do. So we started trying it and it turned into this major project where it was like this challenge I had for myself because I never really wrote songs outside of the group.

What does the rest of the band make of your solo project?
Like I said, everybody was very ready to take a break from each other. Tony was so involved in the record that in some ways it didn’t feel like a huge break. It’s almost like it was out of our hands, like we were sent to each other because the idea that we could actually stay together that long is pretty insane, you know? Eighteen Years! I mean, marriages don’t even stay together that long! I never thought the solo record would turn out as good as it did.

Are you surprised your solo album was received so well?
I never thought the solo record would turn out as good as it did, it has so many different styles on it. I think there’s a nice balance of silly stuff on the record. I mean, the whole idea behind it is that it’s a silly dance record, you know? It was based on the whole Harajuku scene in Tokyo and the idea of self-expression through fashion and being unique and individual. I was on a quest. I was like, ” I know, I’m goin to get some Harajuku Girls and I’m going to roll with them everywhere I go.”

What was the significance of the Harajuku Girls?
It was like my fantasy come true. When I first wrote “What You Waiting For?” I’d written a line in the song and it said “I can’t wait to go back and do Osaka,Tokyo, you Harajuku Girls, damn you got the wicked style.” I was giving them a shout-out basically because they’re wicked.

You’ve had such a long working relationship with your band. Was it hard to adapt to working with new people like Pharrel Williams and Andre 3000?
To get out there and write with all these different people was really hard because you to put your ego aside and you have to get out there and open yourself up to not only new people who you respect and you’re a fan of, but also a whole different culture of music as well. So it was a pretty big trip, I have to say. It was a lot harder than I thought it was going to be and my ego had a real problem with it a lot of the time. What really defines me, when I think about myself and what makes me feel good about myself is that I’m lyricist – I write lyrics and I express myself through music, and I write melodies. I don’t know how I’ve ever done it, it’s all a mystery to me, music, like I go, “Wait, how did that song happen?” So the idea of getting in with somebody I don’t know and trying to make that magic happen is kind of risky and intimidating.

But what an amazing experience.
When the magic really did come, it was really unbelievable because the people I was working with were unbelievably inspiring and talented. It was just so amazing after 18 years to get in a room and see how other people do it because no on taught me; it was just instinct and just trial and error. It was really cool to get in the room with Pharrell and go “oh that’s how you do it,” or Dr. Dre and seeing how he does it.

So how did you get into music?
I think what happened was my older brother brought home a Madness record that had one hit, “Our House.” So when we discovered that when we were like 14, 15, that was it! We were in and we thought we had found the coolest thing around. We were really inspired by the whole ska thing, which turned us onto reggae music as well, and then we just said “We’re gonna start a band.” There was nothing else for us to do in Orange County.

Was your family supportive?
My parents were kind of conservative, strict. At the same time they were musicians and I grew up on Bob Dylan. My first concert I went to was Emmylou Harris. So my parents are a little bit of a contradiction because musically they love all kinds of hippie folk groups, but then they’re very Catholic and strict. When we started the band they were very supportive of it being a hobby, but at the same time we were all meant to go to college and be something when we grow up.

You have done so much more than ‘be something’. You did you first fashion show with L.A.M.B this year at New Your Fashion Week. How was that?
It is different whe you know that you’re actually doing a show, you know? It’s a little bit more pressure. I have a whole other accessories line, too. When you put out a record, like with No Doubt, we always have merchandise line. That’s just the way you do it and it’s pretty ordinary.

Where did the name for the L.A.M.B clothing line come from?

I was trying to think of a name and I had a dog, Megan, for 16 years. She was this little stinky dog that I loved so much and I used to call her Lamb. For most of her life she was called Lamb, because she used to follow me everywhere , she was so dependent on me. When she died, I was just trying to think of a name and I call everybody Lamb, like anybody I love, it’s like my pet word. So I just thought it was a good way to kind of let her live on. It’s really hard because it becomes something more that the name it has this whole new life. It just seemed like the right thing and instead of just saying “Lamb,” I wanted each letter to rotate and I would give different names to it, and the first ones I came up with were “Love, Angel, Music, Baby.”

Do you enjoy the process of designing clothes?
The whole design process is something I’ve done my whole life and it fulfils me in the same way as music – you have nothing and then you have something. It’s just a very creative, fulfilling, passionate thing that I like to do. It’s something I’d like to do for the rest of my life and that’s why I started the clothing line. I think that every season it just gets better and better. I still have a lot to learn, though. I’m still totally a baby at it.

So there will be more No Doubt albums?
That’s the plan. I really didn’t know that it would take so long to make Love. Angel. Music. Baby. Then we ended up putting a greatest hits record out and that took up time. We went on tour. It was amazing — we never even thought we would have a greatest hits record out. I never intended for this record to take so long, but I kind of want to ride the wave while it’s out there.

What about acting? You were amazing as Jean Harlow in The Aviator.
I would love to do another movie, like to have a real role – not that that wasn’t – I mean Jean Harlow in a Martin Scorsese movie is not bad! But I would love to do a film. I have something I’m developing right now, but with films there’s so many poeple involved and it costs so much, and there’s so much at risk; I don’t like to talk about it. When it’s coming out, I’ll talk about.

She works hard for the money, and she ain’t no hollaback girl, but now that the world has embraced Gwen Stefani as the platinum bomb, will she ever find a simple kind of life?

The popular television series The OC and Laguna Beach have made Southern California’s Orange County and attitude like, totally rad. They portray the laidback lifestyle of perfectly aligned palm trees, lazy afternoons, and never-ending spring breaks. Meanwhile, the most famous OC girl of them all, Gwen Stefani, is quietly building her empire as the hardest working girl in show business. Last year, we saw her playing Jean Harlow in Martin Scorsese’s The Aviator, and this year she is high off the phenomenal success of her first solo album – having already achieved worldwide domination as front woman of No Doubt – and summer anthems “Hollaback Girl” and “Cool.” She is also busy spearheading not one but two clothing lines: L.A.M.B (which shares a name with her Love. Angel. Music. Baby. album) and the newly launched Harajuku Lovers.

Her much anticipated runway show for L.A.M.B took place at the Roseland Ballroom during New York fashion week last September and on October 16th she will embark on a major North American tour, also named “Harajuku Lovers,” starting with a sold out performance at the American West Arena in Phoenix. In midst of all this activity on th music, fashion and film fronts, she also finds time to promote other products and services including the HP Photosmart R607 Harajuku Lovers digital camera and the “Hollaback Girl” ringtone, which is available exclusively through Cingular Wireless.

On this particular August afternoon at Quixote Studios in West Hollywood, Gwen Stefani is sitting in a dressing room chair, facing a large mirror while hair stylist Danilo starts crafting a new look for the TRACE cover. Gwen is chatting away, all platinum blondness and sassy sophistication, as stylist Andrea Lieberman and makeup artist Kathy Jeung try to figure out the implications of this new Afro-braided-platinum-punk look. All three are close collaborators of Gwen’s, but now they have experimented with a folded blue scarf holding in the top of her hair, in a subtle nod to the I Love Lucy housewife hysteria from the ’50s, the Afro madness just seems a little more directional. Although Gwen wasn’t feeling it at first, she quickly changes her mind and we all agree to go for the Afro look.

Two of her Harajuku girl dancers are also in attendance. Maya (aka Love), hails from Tokyo, and Mayuko (aka Baby), who is a native of Osaka, but both became Harajuku girls after they auditioned in Los Angeles. I ask where Angel and Music are. No one knows. As she makes her way to the cover set-up where lighting is being tested with Polaroids. Gwen starts rubbing her stomach. “It’s coming,” she says, speaking of her period. This time, her hands aren’t pressed against her bare midriff, as they often are, because her belly is covered by a green Harajuku Lovers t-shirt, but she still tells anyone who cares to listen that she is menstrual, and that her mood isn’t the best it could be.

However, Gwen is open and approachable as ever. We shoot the cover and venture out of the studio to nearby Poinsetta Park for additional pictures. That is where the real Gwen Stefani pop experience is brought to life in a series of casual encounters with Angelenos from all walks of life. Of course we should have suspected that a mid-afternoon outing with a pop star in a public park would cause a bit of a commotion, especially in her home state, and the broad scope of her fan base is a reality that cannot be argued with.

Situation One: A Mexican family in a huge Freightliner delivery truck suddenly stops and idles in the middle of a street, interrupting their work schedule as well as the normal flow of traffic. The wife climbs out of the truck while her eight-year-old daughter stares at the pop star from the front seat, with her father looking on. When the mother returns to the truck with an autograph that reads “To Jackie, Love Gwen,” the daughter starts weeping.
Situation Two: A black man in his early 40s steals a glance at the pop star from the corner of his eye. “Damn!” he says, to no one in particular.
Situation Three: Two LAPD policeman catch wind of our photo shoot, which is taking place without a city permit, but instead of sending us back to the studio across the street, they see Gwen and decide to turn a blind eye to our impromptu production.
Situation Four: A 15-year-old white boy playing basketball in his brand new Air Jordans: “Where’s Gwen? That’s my wife. Hey shweeeetie!”
Situation Five: A tipsy white man in his mid-50s holds his bicycle while decides to speak to Danilo, who is touching up the pop stars Afro. “Is that Gwen Stefani right there? You can tell her Madonna can’t touch her. You can tell her I love her.” To which Gwen replies, “You can tell me, I’m standing right here, aren’t I?” “Well, sure! Isn’t the Hollywood Bowl coming up in a couple of weeks?” “Yes, in a couple of months” “Well, God bless ya. You’ve got it, and most can’t find it. I love ya.”

Andy Warhol first coined the term “superstar” to promote his coterie of New York personalities. The word is now used to describe a widely acclaimed celebrity who has great popular appeal and is considered a major attraction. When we finally sit down for the interview after the enlightening Poinsettia Park episodes, I realized that although Gwen has become accustomed to the adulation, especially in a year that can, by any measure, be described as stellar, she is still relatively unfazed by the everyday situations, privileges and annoyances that come with being a superstar.

“2005 has been a mind-blowing year,” she admits. “It all happened so quick, and wild and different from everything I’ve ever done before, but some of the years in No Doubt before we got on the radio were great as well. To me, it really doesn’t feel all that different from being at Tower Records in Orange County, one year into the band, like 17 years ago, and hearing people whispering about me as the girl from that band. But still, finishing this album and having it accepted the way it was, that was great. There was a lot of mish-mashing and unlikely pairings, like getting into the studio with Dr Dre and Andre 3000. I wanted to make an ’80s inspired dance album, in the style of Debbie Deb and Lisa Lisa and the Cult Jam and Club Nouveau, but also with Prince and The Time in mind, and I could see how Dr Dre was just rolling his eyes.”

Debbie Deb, as some of you older electro-heads may recall, was a two-hot wonder, but one could easily call her a one-hit wonder, because her two songs “Lookout Weekend” (“Look out weekend ’cause here I come, because weekends were made for fun”) and “When I Hear Music” sound almost the same. “Those are the songs that I would listen to when I used to go dancing at Disneyland or places like Videopolis or Studio K,” Gwen remembers. “For this album, that Debbie Deb style worked for me, because I wanted a record that was more of a chant than a melody. I wanted to do a record a record that would be in the clubs. With No Doubt, that would have been impossible, because that style of dance music excludes the drummer.”

Those years growing up in Orange County remain the foundation of her musical expression, and many of her biggest hits – starting with the breakthrough No Doubt songs “Just a Girl” and “Don’t Speak” from the 1995 album Tragic Kingdom – are derived from Gwen’s own experiences in mid-to-late ’80s Anaheim, home to Disneyland and the Magic Kingdom. In those years, Orange County was the residence of middle class white Californians who chose that particular suburban landscape over the metropolitan sprawl of Los Angeles, but it was also the chosen destination of many immigrant families, and young families, who were able to find nice and safe homes that they could actually afford.

Orange County was known as Reagan country at the time. The years of the gas crisis and forced busing created an extreme Republican climate. There were planned communities like Costa Mesa, where corporations would build an entire city from scratch, with a city center, a mall and recreation centers. Bands like No Doubt proliferated and thrived in a scene that was essentially a reaction to Reaganomics. The post-punk scene had become so vibrant and the music coming out was daring in its own fusion of mod with ska and reggae and hip hop. The early No Doubt records display that unique fusion, and it was obvious that they were listening to The Clash just as much as they appreciated Grandmaster Flash.

Shawn Mortensen, the longtime TRACE magazine photographer who shot the images in this portfolio, has been a friend of Gwen and the other members of No Doubt since 1994, when the band was just about to switch from their indie label to Interscope Records. “There was an immediate connection,” he says, “because we had all hung out in the same area in Orange County and we used to go to the same places, the same clubs. Although I was born in Long Beach, I grew up in Los Angeles and Orange County. When the label asked me to direct a video for them, I knew it would work. They weren’t famous yet, but when I first heard Tragic Kingdom, it felt to me like the Sergeant Pepper’s of Orange County life.” Shawn, who has photographed Gwen and No Doubt many times, ended up being best man at Gwen’s 2002 wedding to Gavin Rossdale. Hearing him talk about the ’80s inspired parties in OC, one senses a deep nostalgia in his voice and a longing for a mythical era that epitomized the uninhabited, creative spirit and do-it-yourself mentality of rebellious Southern Californians.

With her song dedicated to the over-the-top style of the girls who populate Tokyo’s fashionable Harajuku district, Gwen Stefani single-handedly made them recognizable to millions of Americans who would be hard-pressed to locate Japan on a world map. She is building a franchise around the Harajuku iconography so that it can exist beyond her lyrics and videos in her fans; imaginations. Yet, her most popular song from Love. Angel. Music. Baby. album, so far, is not the Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis-produced “Harajuku Girls” but rather the Neptunes-produced “Hollaback Girl.” Although Gwen is now known for her penchant for Vivienne Westwood and Christian Dior couture dresses – she wore a special John Galliano creation at her wedding – few of her hardcore fans are actually familiar with the high fashion Japenese brands (Yohji Yamamoto, Comme des Garçons, Hysteric Glamour) that she sings about in the song “Harajuku Girls.”

They can, however, relate to the Carson High School cheerleaders she recruited from outer Los Angeles for the perfectly choreographed video that Paul Hunter directed in full Technicolor, with emphasis on Gwen’s pink bra, red majorette’s outfit and bright lowrider. The vivid imagery and The Neptunes’ simple one-two beat complemented the girl power words: “Uh huh, that’s my shit. All the girls stomp your feet like that. ‘Cause I ain’t no hollaback girl.”

“The simplicity of the way Pharrell produces is so different,” she says. “It’s just one take and four instruments. It’s raw and different to the way we produce with No Doubt.” Looking back, it seems ironic that “Hollaback Girl” actually almost never made it to the album, because it was recorded after the album was completed. “We were done with the album and we really didn’t have any space left,” she says, “but I felt I didn’t have my attitude song. I called Pharrell and told him he’d be mad, because he wasn’t on the album. After two days, we had two really good songs, ‘Candy Land’ and ‘You Started It,’ but neither would make it onto the album. Then we did ‘Hollaback Girl’.”

After all, the first Neptunes collaboration outside of hip hop was with No Doubt on “Hella Good” from the 2001 Rock Steady album. They have come a long way since then. More than just an attitude song, “Hollaback Girl” somehow represented the mood of the summer of 2005, really striking a chord with young fans around the world. Shortly after “Hollaback Girl” emerged as one of the most significant songs of the year, Gwen flew to Miami to work with Pharrell in his studio and record more songs. “I have another record and I have to say the stuff that me and Pharrell did is so rad. I’m afraid if I wait too long before releasing it, it will be old. DJ Clue came down came down to the studio with eight beautiful girls, and he listened to the whole thing.”

Now that they have an entire album’s worth of material, Gwen is toying with the idea of releasing those songs as an entirely new album for Christmas or Valentine’s Day. She even has the artwork and creative direction all ready to go. But then again, the schedules may change, because her record company already has a DVD lined up for a Christmas release. This is what happens when superstars get prolific.

In the midst of all this hyperactivity, one has to question the future of No Doubt and the viability of a band, however successful, whose lead singer has found so many niches of her own, away from the legacy of a sound that was first formulated in 1986. Gwen refutes any suggestion that the band might break up, and she even mentions that they have pledged to reunite in January of 2006. She says all this while making sure she provides the context of her solo career.

“The Rock Steady Tour was one of the best experiences for us as a band. At the end of it, Adrian [Young, the drummer] had a baby. I had just got married, like two days before the tour started. After the tour ended, that’s when I heard that Club Nouveau song again, and the idea of my solo record turned out to be a huge personal challenge. We all decided to concentrate on our own projects. Tom [Dumont, the guitarist] is on tour with Matt Costa and Tony [Kanal, the bassist] is playing with Perry Farrell. When we get into the studio again, it will be great for everyone, because they will be all charged up, with the time that I was away.”

The No Doubt greatest hits album with a wonderful cover of Talk Talk’s “It’s My Life” came out early last year, at the same time when Gwen was beginning to work on her own album. Having been with the same three guys for 18 years, including a now well-documented eight years as Tony Kanal’s girlfriend, she feels that they are a family for life. “It doesn’t feel like we’ve been apart,” she says, “because Tony has been my bouncing board. I still lean on him for advice.” Tony produced three tracks for L.A.M.B and although he has been working on his own side projects in Jamaica and elsewhere, he has remained a big presence in her life. (She points out that he is the one who turned her on to Club Nouveau and Debbie Deb in the first place.)

The song “Don’t Speak,” which spent a record-breaking 16 weeks at the top of the charts in 1996 and pretty much put No Doubt on the map, is well known as Gwen’s heartfelt response to her difficult breakup with Tony. A decade later, the gorgeous video (set in Italy) that Sophie Muller directed for Gwen’s latest single “Cool” is a testament – albeit a very confusing one – to the unbreakable bond between Gwen and Tony. In it, Tony’s current girlfriend plays the girlfriend of Gwen’s fictional ex, acted by a model who looks suspiciously like Gwen’s real life husband Gavin, in a song that was inspired by Gwen’s current relationship to Tony.

“Cool” Is a prime example of Gwen’s proven songwriting skills – “After all the obstacles/ It’s good to see you now with someone else/ And it’s such a miracle that you and me are still good friends/ After all that we’ve been through / I know we’re cool.” Some of the inspiration came from the song’s producer, Dallas Austin. “‘Cool’ is an amazing song,” she says, “because I wanted to work with Dallas Austin. He’d signed Fishbone, and I felt we’d have a connection, especially knowing that he’s such a solid songwriter. He had a similar story with an ex-girlfriend of eight years, and he’d written a song about it that he’d never finished. As soon as he started playing the chords I helped him finish the song. He had this idea of cool, which he couldn’t make cool, so I wrote the lyrics in ten minutes. I wanted a Cindy Lauper or Madonna ‘Crazy For You’ feel to the song, and it came out beautifully.”

Walking across the Poinsettia Park, Gwen receives a call on her cell phone from someone who could very well be a booking agent, and from the conversation that we overhear, it sounds like she is being offered the opportunity to tour right up to Christmas day. “That’s something I’ll have to speak to Gavin about,” she says. ” I just can’t make that decision right now. We’re supposed to spend Christmas in England.” Gwen admits that she is nervous about the upcoming Harajuku Lovers Tour, because up until now, touring has always been about going on the road with her No Doubt family. “The tour is going to be different, because it will involve a lot of costume changes. It will be a lot more theatrical, and I will get to do things that I could never do with No Doubt, things that would be considered cheesy in the rock world. I mean, I love theater, I love the Sound of Music, so the Harajuku Lovers Tour will be an opportunity.”

It all seems so convenient, and I have to admit that several of my friends find Gwen Stefani’s constant references to the Harajuku subculture annoying. The tour that references the clothing line that references the camera that references the lyrics from the single may all be a bit much, but beyond a simple celebrity marketing ploy, it appears that Gwen Stefani is serious about the cross-promotion. When pressed for an answer, she seems to genuinely see her Harajuku-influenced mantra as a way to give more Gwen back to her fans. If she can make a little extra money on the side while doing that, well why not?

“The concept behind Harajuku Lovers line was to create clothes that would be better conceived than just another merchandising line. I’ve been working on it for over a year, and it was hard to get it right. Whereas L.A.M.B is my creative project that I have total free ride on, it remains limited by the price points. It’s just too expensive for most of my fans. Harajuku Lovers is how I express another kind of creativity, because I am so inspired by the whole Japanese culture. The song lyrics are all over the t-shirts, and the clothes are available for all ages and sizes, from babies all the way to XXL. We have erasers and school stuff and we even teamed up with Nakajima for some Hello Kitty items.”

Although Gwen has full creative control over the L.A.M.B line, she has recruited an new designer to guide her through the creative process. New York-based Zaldy who has designed costumes for Mary J Blige and Christina Aguilera in addition to Gwen, says that he has known Gwen for a while because his ex-boyfriend, Matthew Anderson, used to be Gwen’s make-up artist.

“Even before meeting her in person, the first day I saw her on TV, I could tell she was for real,” he says. “She just seemed like the kind of girl I would have hung out with in high school.” One night, when he was returning to Los Angeles from the Coachella music festival with Gwen’s hair stylist Danilo, he was invited to a party at Gwen’s house. That’s when she approached him with the idea of helping her design her new collection. “I was flattered, and when we started working together, I had to process all this information. When I design the L.A.M.B line, I always have her in mind, because she is the muse, the only muse, whereas when I design my own line, I have other muses. It is really a great experience for me, because [stylist] Andrea Lieberman is also a consultant, and I get to work in a team. It’s almost like doing a group project.”

In 1997, I was invited to a Chinese restaurant called Chi Dynasty, in the Hollywood Hills near Gwen’s house in the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles. That night, I had dinner with photographer Shawn Mortensen, Gavin and Gwen. I remember asking her about being a star, and she told me about the constant online interactions she had with her fans. She said that she had a habit of checking the Internet on a regular basis. She admitted that, somehow, she always managed to find the time to to maintain ongoing dialogues with a lot of her devoted fans. Eight years later, at the Quixote Studios, I reminded her of our conversation and asked her whether she still had time to engage in regular dialogue with her fans, having recently spotted dozen of websites dedicated to the cult of Stefani. She thought about it for a second and said “I like going online and look here and there, but it’s not really that healthy, because you get bummed out a lot. Actually, all the fan forums on our sites are down at the moment because they got hacked.”

When the interview was drawing to a close, I asked her about the history behind my all-time favourite No Doubt song, “Sunday Morning,” from the Tragic Kingdom album. She smiled and said it was such a long time ago. She told me that the video, which was directed in the spring of 1997 by Sophie Muller, in her third of eight collaborations with No Doubt, was filmed at her grandparents’ house. “The guy that’s in the store when I buy the tomatoes, that’s my grandpa.” Those somewhat innocent statements are really charming coming from a 35-year-old superstar in her prime. They also go a long way towards explaining the enduring popularity of Gwen Stefani, the hardworking girl from the OC who once sang about wanting a simple kind of life. “I was with Tony when we wrote ‘Sunday Morning’, and we were just kids just learning how to write songs. I never in a million years would have that that…”

Gwen Stefani has a platinum album, a red-hot clothing line, and a solo tour. Never has world domination seemed so cute. By Deanna Kizis.

Gwen Stefani’s home sits atop a steep driveway in Los Angeles, like a butter cream-frosted castle complete with a turret, bougainvillea vines, bathing pools, and fountains. When I ring the bell to announce my presence, her Minnie Mouse voice drifts down from a balcony above: “Hold on! I’m not ready yet!” A moment later Stefani – pop superstar, body beautiful, famous wife of Gavin Rossdale – bounds down her wrought iron staircase, her bare feet slapping the terracotta tile. Her bottle blond hair is pinned on one side like a Vargas pinup girl. Her famous abs, just visible between her white tank top and jeans, are tan and taut. Stefani’s fully made-up – brow pencil, foundation, blush – and in her pocket are not one but two golden-hued lip glosses, which she sweeps across her lips as frequently as some hipsters light cigarettes.

After wiggling her way into the vaulted-ceiling living room and apologizing profusely for the mess (a glance around the black-and-white-tiled kitchen and the dining room with its Moorish chairs and dripping candles reveals no disarray to speak of), Stefani fills a tumbler of pink Vitamin-water for each of us and plops on a white overstuffed couch, then jumps off again to see if she can find a missing pearl earring on the floor. “I’m such a dick when it comes to keeping track of stuff,” she says, her butt in the air and her head somewhere underneath the side table. She lost the engagement ring Rossdale gave her four years ago after putting it on a nightstand before bed, hearing it drop to the floor, and never seeing it again. As Stefani wriggles under the furniture, it’s impossible not to notice that at home she doesn’t glide the way she does on the red carpet, nor does she stomp the way she does on stage. Here she wiggles. She plops.

Stefani, who has been having her moment for the past decade as the lead singer of the unstoppable band No Doubt, is having another heyday with her multi-platinum solo record Love, Angel, Music, Baby. At the time of this interview, she has been nominated for six MTV Video Music Awards, her singles “Cool,” “Hollaback Girl,” “Rich Girl,” and “What You Waiting For?” are getting constant airplay, and she’s about to go on her first solo tour. As if that weren’t enough, this month Stefani, who already owns her own clothing company, is launching a new product line with Sanrio, the billion-dollar Japanese empire behind Hello Kitty. She’s so excited about Harajuku Lovers, her T-shirts, cell-phone charms, stickers, and other ephemera featuring four characters based on her team of Japanese back-up dancers, that she spontaneously does a little bump-and-grind, shaking her hips and sing-songing, “I am. So happy! Mmmm-hmmmm.” Stefani proudly shows me the website – the tagline is “A fatal attraction to cuteness” – which features an animated town where one can shop and navigate a faux Harajuku shopping district (inspired by the real one in Tokyo). Stefani will be peddling everything from stationery to $250 Hewlett Packard cameras, and no part of the cow will go unused: the products refer back to her music, using lyrics from songs and visual clues from her videos. She’ll be taking the Harajuku Lovers products on tour so fans can buy more than the usual concert T-shirt. “everyone should be doing something creative like this,” Stefani says, clicking various cutesy icons on her site. “I get so inspired by things – like the way Harajuku girls dress in Japan. Everything I am is one big stolen good. Once you filter it through yourself, it becomes yours.”

It seems as if the torch for “new inspiring female icon” was passed from Madonna to Stefani when the singer achieved instant fame with the anti-sexism anthem “Just a Girl” in 1995. Her image – one part riot grrrl in bondage pants, one part post-apocalyptic Marilyn Monroe – is something she has cultivated, even though Stefani refuses to call herself a feminist. “Before I could say whether or not I am one,” she says, “I’d need an exact definition of what the term ‘feminist’ means.” Her provocative look, she says, simply evolved over the years – from her high school days when she liked to make her own clothes (“My room was the danger zone; if you went in there you were definitely going to get pins in your feet”) to touring with No Doubt, when the punk buckles and ska plaids came into full effect. Finally exposed to stylists on video shoots and encouraged by her British husband to dress more fashionably, Stefani found she had an interest in couture. “I didn’t know about high fashion at all, but you start learning you know?” Stefani says in her SoCal cadence. “Gavin changed me a lot, too; you dress for whomever you’re trying to impress, and he really hated my yellow bondage pants.” She laughs. The result is that Stefani looks more powerful than ever, playing with stereotypes on stage in, say,, an Alice in Wonderland costume with a garter belt and pink Christian Dior heels while she sings about her baby lust.

Stefani will allow that the term “feminist” relates in some way to her; when she was younger, she says, she was passive, a mediocre student, and obsessed with her boyfriend. “I was going out with Tony [Kanal, the bassist in No Doubt], and my whole life was Tony, Tony, Tony,” she says. “So when we broke up, I started writing songs about it, and I realized I wasn’t even a human being until I discovered I could write. Plus, the people around me thought my input, business-wise, wasn’t important just because I was a woman. That changed everything.”

This realization showed her a way to distinguish herself from angry female acts such as Hole and Sarah McLachlan/Jewel songbirds. She still maintains her anti-sexism, girl-power image, and it’s entirely intentional; she wrote “Hollaback Girl” (in which Stefani declares that she’s done with female backstabbing and suggests that she can either rise above criticism or settle things the old-fashioned way) at the last possible moment, jumping on a plane from London to New York so she could work with producer Pharrell Williams, because she realized her album was missing a “don’t fuck with me” track.

The fact that Stefani is hawking cell-phone charms and powder blue cameras may seem inconsistent, until you consider that she’s a consummate girlie girl, so obsessed with feminine accoutrements that she admits she puts lipstick on before she goes for a jog. “I love being able to get people to go off,” Stefani says, “but I’m the girl who sold makeup at the dollar makeup mall in high school.” Thus, it makes sense that Stefani would be attracted to Japanese “cute” culture (or “Kawaii”). Stefani doesn’t tend to over-intellectualize, but this too could be considered a feminist act; overtly feminine items like pink Hello Kitty vacuums subvert the stereotype. “We like Gwen Stefani’s strength and that she’s cute,” says Linda Scott, author of Fresh Lipstick: Redressing Fashion and Feminism (Palgrave Macmillan) and associate professor of women’s studies, advertising, and art at the University of Illinois. “She’s essentially able to ‘own her girlness.’ Women consider that courageous.”

On the other hand, Stefani’s closed-lipped stance on women’s politics irks some feminists. “She’s like Madonna in terms of using clothes for self-expression,” allows Ariel Levy, author of Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the rise of Raunch Culture (Free Press). “But she goes out of her way to avoid being a complicated persona. You have to project ideas onto her in order to see greater goals.” Which isn’t to say there’s anything wrong with that. Adds Levy: “Gwen Stefani is fun. I see pictures of her and I’m like, ‘That’s an amazing getup.’ But I don’t know that she’s taking womankind forward. She could, but she’s resolutely invested in not doing that.”

At first Stefani talks somewhat openly about her ten-year relationship with Rossdale. “We’ve been married three years now,” she says with a bubbly giggle. “Can you believe it?” She says they think of themselves as a team, so as she goes on tour in mega-venues and he hits the road, playing intimate clubs with his new band, Institute, this doesn’t manifest itself as competition. “I just went to Miami for two weeks to write songs, and he stayed in London,” she says. “It’s cool because when we’re not together we go full force – I’ll stay at the studio until all hours – and then when we finally are back together we just crash, lie in bed, and watch TV.” When asked how to keep a long-term relationship vital, she replies, “I don’t have any marital advice to give. I’m like, marriage is just hard. If you work, you get the results.” The work must be paying off: Later Stefani will go watch Rossdale film a music video in the San Fernando Valley in 100-degree heat, and her face lights up – she tells a story about the time her husband walked in with his shirt yanked up under his armpits when Stefani’s stylist was at the house. “Girls were screaming,” she says. “I was like, ‘Damn, honey, you can’t walk around like that! We have horny women in here.’ ”

Stefani is known for writing personal reflections in her lyrics (Tragic Kingdom was essentially a musical journal about her breakup with Kanal). With “What You Waiting For?” a runaway hit – in which she sings about being caught between wanting a child but also wanting to enjoy her fame and glory while it lasts – the world has put her on baby-watch. “I get asked when I’m having a baby in every interview,” she says. “Like today, I talked to these morning-show radio announcers” – she puts on her best DJ voice – ” ‘Gwen! So! When are you going to have a baby!’ ” She shakes her head.

It does sound irritating. And yet when she performs “Waiting,” she holds her hands out as though her entire body is an entire ticking biological clock while singing lyrics like, “Take a chance you stupid ho/ look at your watch now!/ You’re still a super hot female!” She’s 35, and like-minded women may have gotten the message that it’s OK to engage Stefani in discussion about choosing between her career and family.

“I guess,” she says with a shrug. “But even you asking me is weird ’cause I don’t know you.”

Stefani gre up so close to the Disneyland theme park that the ashes from the nightly fireworks show landed in her backyard. (Her parents still live in the house where she grew up.) Disney references are all over her work. “That’s what happens when you grow up across the street,” she says. Besides the title of the record Tragic Kingdom, the Alice in Wonderland costumes,a dn the Pirates of the Caribbean set in her “Rich Girl” video, she is like one of Disneyland’s beloved characters: sweet, inspiring, adorable, funny, charming – all the things you’d expect her to be. But she can be serious and protective of her privacy. After Stefani shows me some gorgeous black-and-white photos Herb Ritts took of her and Rossdale as a wedding present (“He’s hot, huh?”) that sit atop a grand piano at the far end of the living room, I press her to tell me more about her personal life, with the intention of going deeper. But she gets upset. “Maybe you should just quit while you’re ahead, huh?” she asks, her voice hitting a higher register. “Before you start asking questions I really don’t want to answer.”

She doesn’t yell, but she tries to keep her cool, and doesn’t quite pull it off. The effect is bracing. Considering her strong but vulnerable persona, I want to comfort her, to apologize. Then I find myself bewildered. Isn’t the Hollaback Girl tougher than this? I want to ask, but decide to take her advice.

Stefani is much more relaxed when we’re talking about her future plans, like the fact that she wants to do another film (her first cameo was as Jean Harlow in The Aviator), and that she might release a second solo album next year given the positive reaction to the first. Perhaps not surprisingly, Stefani is trying to keep her personal life out of her writing these days. “It’s not like it was back when I wrote Tragic Kingdom,” she says. “I mean, now, being famous, it will never be the same.” Which isn’t to say that she’s succeeding. “Last week I was with Pharrell, writing this track about dancing, and he kept coming up with these great dance one-liner clichés like ‘Shake that ass’ or whatever. I was like, ‘How did you think of that?’ I came up with all this heartfelt stuff.”

As I leave Stefani’s house, I remember a Disneyland memory of my own: Back when I was little, I took a wrong turn and caught Minnie Mouse taking off her head, revealing, inside the plush costume, a regular lady with her hair in a sweaty ponytail. I screamed in terror and broke out in disappointed tears, the spell broken. Like Minnie, Gwen Stefani may be incomprehensibly different under her Gwen Stefani suit. She is a business woman with a marketing plan and an image to protect. And she may be less carefree and more fragile at times than she appears.

Of course, whether it’s weird for Stefani or not, we all still want to know when the Gwen and Gavin Baby-Watch will be replaced by the patter of little rocker feet. Stefani does make a definite promise, which is also a demand: “When I get pregnant, I will tell everybody, trust me,” she says shortly before I depart, her sweetly sassy attitude back in place. “And I want a big friggin’ shower. OK?”

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.