Thanks to Julio at No Doubt Web. The current issue of Nylon USA features a style guide on Gwen from Tragic Kingdom days through to the Rock Steady era.

Amongst the bunch was these fab images from Teen People US May 2000. Check them out!

Do you have scans that you want to add to the gallery?? Use the contact form to upload them

Gwen tells us what gets her grinning

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

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

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

Gwen’s get grinning guide

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

Gwen Stefani’s own brand of sexy-cool has made her a style icon. With her first solo album and a line of clothes she’s designing herself, Stefani races into the future. Here, the songstress talks about staying true to herself through the firestorm of fame, her hope for a baby, and the real reason she wears those big, baggy jeans. By Susan Swimmer.

After years of fronting the Grammy-award-winning band No Doubt, Gwen Stefani decided it was time to branch out. She’s “on fire right now,” and who can argue? Her first solo album, a hip-hop inspired dance fest called Love. Angel. Music. Baby, was released in November 2004 and has already gone platinum; she’s just completed a European tour; the clothing line she designs, called L.A.M.B for short, is wildly successful; and a line of accessories and T-shirts called Harajuku Lovers – directly tied to her album – is set to launch this fall. It’s no wonder Stefani’s quirky sense of cool is now the backbone of her very own fashion empire – her sexy-sweet, gender-bending looks have inspired everyone from mall rats to rap moguls, changing the way the world thinks about style. For Stefani, life doesn’t imitate art, her life is her art.

Girly Grunge

By her own admission, Stefani’s look is an ever-changing obsession that started long before she made it to the top of the charts. “Growing up in Anaheim, CA, I always made my own clothes,” she says. “In the beginning I’d go to thrift stores, or places like The Wet Seal and Contempo Casuals, and try to find something weird. Then I’d take it home and remake it. I had a sewing machine in my room; it was the danger zone. It was, like, pins and needles everywhere.”

Stefani’s brand of girlish grunge developed a small, cult-like following among the Gen X-ers who loved Ska music. “My girlfriend and I went to every single Scars and JC Penney’s and bought out every single child’s extra-large T-shirt and tank top. We printed pink No Doubt logos on them and sold them at our concerts.” Stefani paired her T-shirt with super-baggy pants culled from the boys’ section of thrift stores, “because I never really liked my legs or butt,” and her fans went wild. By the time the band started to make it nationally, there were legions of Gwen-itators.

Searching for… Something

Looking at Stefani now, in the studio for Marie Claire’s cover shoot, it’s hard to believe it all started with something so homespun. She is surrounded by racks and racks of brightly patterned couture clothing, and her trademark platinum hair cascades in curls halfway down her back. Stefani wears big, baggy jeans, torn and faded to perfection, and neon-green bra straps peek out from underneath a ribbed white tank. As our talk turns to her career, Stefani’s near-encyclopedic memory of every look worn, every lyric sung, and every concert played, is scary.

I flash Stefani a photograph of herself with fuchsia hair, circa 2000, and her face falls. “My boyfriend and I had just broken up,” she says of the time she and now-husband Gavin Rossdale almost called it quits. “You can tell by my style that I was searching so hard. I was 29, and I was like, Fuck it, I’m going to dye my hair pink. And I had braces, the one thin I bought when I got rich.”

Stefani admits the drastic look wasn’t just about a breakup. After two wildly successful albums, expectations were high for No Doubt to hit again. “It was a really hard time for me,” she says now. “I thought, I gotta be someone, I gotta live up to who I want to be.” It was during this time that Stefani wrote some of her best lyrics. “I really define myself as a songwriter. It’s pure torture, but it’s magic when it happens. When I realized I could write songs, that’s when I discovered myself. Before that, I didn’t feel I was good at anything. I’m a very different girl now than I used to be.”

The Bindi Boom

Stefani says the girl she used to be had no direction. “I had a hard time learning in school. I didn’t know what I was going to do,” she says. She was taking art classes at a local community college, toying with the idea of working as a makeup artist, when the band got offered a European tour. Performing gave Stefani an outlet for the visual experimentation she loved – whatever inspired her got worked into her wardrobe – and she had an innate knack for clashing styles. “I went out with [No Doubt bassist] Tony Kanal for eight years. He’s Indian, and I grew up watching his mom. She’d get all made up, with her sari and her jewels on, and I thought she was so glamorous. I bought those stick-on earrings and started wearing them on my forehead as bindis.” When Stefani wore one in the “Just a Girl” video paired with sporty workout wear, it typified her fashion-blender sensibilities.

Girl Power

No Doubt’s popularity grew exponentially with each successive release, and Stefani rode the wave of huge sales and glowing reviews. When they released Rock Steady, their fifth album, Stefani says it was one of the best times in her life. “Our egos were gone,” she says of her bandmates. “We were just so in love with each other and so proud of the album. It was like, ‘This is crazy, how’d we get so far?’ ”

Stefani felt strong and confident, and the look she honed for the tour was a sort of edgy, sexy, urban chic. “I was inspired by a trip to Jamaica,” Stefani says of the mesh top she wore under a barely there bikini top in 2001. “I wore grafitti pants that looked like a mock-up of the album cover artwork, and I had just done this Pussycat Dolls [burlesque] show with these big ponytails, and I was like, I wanna do ponytails.” Stefani’s body, which she admits takes a lot of work to maintain, was ab-fab. “Having to work out sucks, but once you get me on the treadmill I’m happy,” she says. “I fight getting there, like everybody. It’s always been something I have to work and earn.”

Dream Dress

In 2002, Stefani married long-time love Rossdale ina traditional ceremony in London. “That was one of my best looks ever,” Stefani gushes. “I felt very beautiful. John Galliano did my gown. I talked to him on the phone and showed him pictures of things I liked. He sent drawings over, and the bottom of the dress was all pink. I was like, Is that a shadow, or is that really what he’s going to do? I never told him to make it pink.”

Stefani’s workload has been nonstop ever since the nuptials, and she credits her husband for “balancing me and reeling me in.” With a schedule like hers, it can’t be easy. “A great day for me is not getting out of bed,” she allows. “I like to see how many snack I can eat there, how many crumbs I can drop, and how many really bad TV shows I can watch. I also like the Discovery Channel, and shows about makeovers or babies being born.”

Clearly, motherhood is on her mind, and at 35, Stefani wrestles with the possibility of soon or never. “I’ve always wanted to be a mother,” she says. “I was hanging out with my nephew the other day, and he’s like a frickin’ Twinkie he’s so delicious. But it’s kind of not up to me. I’ve been on this journey, and I don’t want to be too greedy about what’s going to come next. I’ll be really happy when it happens.”

You Know You’ve Arrived When…

In 2003 No Doubt was tapped to perform at the Super Bowl, an honor she calls one of the best moments in her life. What’s more, Stefani shared the stage with Sting, whom she had long adored. “I actually met him for the first time when I was 16,” she says. “My dad worked for Yamaha motorcycles, and he got me backstage after one of the Police’s concerts. I was really fat and puberty-stricken, and my dad was like, ‘ Ask him for an autograph.’ So I did, and he was really mean. But I still loved him.” Stefani laughs at the memory. “When I met Sting years later, I told him that story, and he was like, ‘Oh man, I was such a dick back then,’ ” she says. “But he’s such a great guy.”

Stefani’s skyrocketing status opened unlikely doors, including Hollywood’s Golden Globe ceremony in 2004. “I felt very much out of my element there.I wore a very simple vintage Valentino gown, with my hair up in a French twist. The whole thing was inspired by Hitchcock’s Rear Window. I felt so sophisticated. The press kind of worked me over for that look, but then a year later they said they like it. Whatever.”

Stefani has learned to live with the bad reviews. It’s not like it ever discourages me from doing something I want to do,” she says. “I really don’t care what people say. If I followed what people said I should do, I wouldn’t be here right now.”

East Meets West

Stefani’s most recent style incarnation – sporty Lolita meets French maid – is actually her own take on a trend she saw in Tokyo’s Harajuku neighborhood. “I was really inspired by the kids there,” she says. “They were all about self-expression through fashion, and this whole ping-pong match between Eastern and Western and how we steal each other’s ideas.”

Stefani says the idea of adding four Japanese backup dancers to her show came to her in a dream. Studying a 2005 red-carpet picture of herself with the girls, Stefani is loving the poufy crinoline skirts paired with neon knee pads that pop off the page. I pull out one last photo. It’s a picture of a brunette Stefani wearing almost the exact same crinoline skirt, circa 1989. “Do you see that?” she squeals. “It’s like the same look for 20 years. That’s so crazy! I feel like I’ve come full circle.” And with that, Stefani disappears through the racks of clothes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gwen Stefani has ditched No Doubt in a bid to be the next Madonna. Complete with English husband and questionable movie career.

“My album will probably end up being called Fuck You or something,” shrugs Gwen Stefani and then cackles for a while, shattering the silence of her floor-to-ceiling white suite in the sickly contemporary St Martin’s Lane Hotel.

The No Doubt singer is throwing around potential titles for her upcoming solo album, a supposed “side-project”, as would-be superstars put it when they’re still rather embarrassingly attached to the band that made them in the first place (see also Beyoncé Knowles, Justin Timberlake). But she’s being disingenuous. The album will eventually be called Love, Angel, Music, Baby, the final detail is a near military plan for world domination. Why else would the 35-year-old have already bagged a role as ’30s starlet Jean Harlow in Martin Scorcese’s new Howard Hughes biopic, The Aviator?

Naturally, Stefani already has the diva-like retinue of flunkies. She sits stiffly in her chair, trademark red lips blazing, while her over-eager PR, hair and make-up squad whisper in the adjoining room. The door is slightly ajar – in case of screams, gasps, hissy fits. And she’s still pretending that it all happened by accident. “I didn’t want to think of the idea of doing the record, it just came,” she says, her brown eyes wide.

Pull the other one. “No, I never thought of even doing this before. Why would I?” she shrugs. with faux naivety. “I didn’t even think about being in a band before I was in one. I don’t really feel it’s in my hands…”

She will continue to protest a little too much throughout the interview…

You’ve packed up and gone solo. Why now?
The idea was for me to do an ’80s-inspired record for fun, as a side project. Not a solo record, not like I’m going to suddenly reveal “The Real Gwen” [giggles]. Suddenly pour out my heart and soul! It was going to be a fun project and it turned into something super hard! [laughs]

On the first single, What You Waiting For?, you sing “You’re still a super-hot female.” Is that how you see yourself?
I’m not going to do it 10 years from now, am I? I want to do a sexy dance record. I have a list of things I want to do. You start running out of time at a certain point in your life – you’re like, “Fuck, what have I done?” Everyone’s like [whiny voice] “What does the band think about this?” This is my fucking life, OK? We’re not talking about what the band thinks!

What does the band think? Is there any ill-feeling?
As far as I know, no. I mean, who knows when it actually comes out what it will be like for everybody, I don’t know. But they know I’m a woman and I need to be able to do things for myself. I feel in some ways it’s not equal, because their clock is different to mine. Those guys can have babies whenever they feel like it. I want to do some projects but I also want a family.

You worked with Pharrell Williams, Andre 3000 and Linda Perry. Were they all your choices?
Linda Perry was not even on my list of people to work with. I’ve known her for years because we were the first two girls to be signed to Interscope, but I never wanted to work with her. She came up to me at the Grammys and said, “We are gonna do something together!” And I was thinking, “Oh great. You don’t understand the record I’m wanna make. I’m gonna work with Prince!”

So why did you have a change of heart?
The record company was putting pressure on me to work with her straight off the Rock Steady tour. I cried in my bed [laughs] and then I agreed. We did one song which wasn’t right, then the next day I came in and she’d been up all night – maniac – and had this track, What You Waiting For?, and I was so inspired. She’s so fast, I would come in and she’d written a song and I was like “Hey, wait for me! It’s my fuckin’ record!”

And you had a fight?
No, not like a fight, it was all me. I’d never worked with a girl before. I’ve always had the same boys, so it was a little weird. But there was one day when we were writing this track about my first boyfriend I kissed in high school and he actually… he died and I’d written this song for him and it was really personal. And then Linda gave me these lyrics and I was getting my period and you know when you’re ready to bust up? I started crying and I was like, “I can’t see her, I have to go home! I can’t write in front of her.” And that was that. I phoned up Tony [Kanal, No Doubt bassist and Gwen's ex] and he said, “Don’t worry, we’re going out tonight, come over here.”

After the Tragic Kingdom tour in ‘97, you and Tony had split up and your brother Eric had left the band to be an animator for The Simpsons. You went back to live at your family home. Did you think life was falling apart?
It wasn’t really like that. I went back and I was rich – you would think we’d have been a lot richer, but we really had a bad record deal. But I got to buy a beautiful house. And on that album I’d learnt I could write songs. Before, I never really had big ambitions, I was always in love, I just wanted to be girlfriend and a mom. But when I found out – “Fuck! I can write these songs and they sound like exactly how it feels” – I felt finally me. I took it so seriously…

How do you mean?
I got into Joni Mitchell and Sylvia Plath and reading and really trying to use words like [they were] colours. I think I wrote my best stuff on [2000 album] Return of Saturn, although I know it only sold four million – sorry and all that. But I was fucked in that time period. Maybe that was how I flipped out. I was depressed. If you look at my style then it shows.

You mean the pink hair?
The pink hair [raises eyebrows], it really reflected my needs at the time. When I look back at pictures now I’m like, “Wow, you were searchin’!” I was turning 30 and I didn’t know who I was.

What’s it like Mrs Gavin Rossdale?
You know I’m like, [sarky voice] “i just can’t wait to tell the world about my marriage!” Everybody wants to know. And up until I got married I never really had secrets. But when it comes to getting married, you have someone who you’re responsible for. You’re a team.

You got married in London – Gavin’s hometown. It’s hardly neutral territory…
In our lived it was the place. For me, London is like a magical, fairytale land. All the music I grew up loving came from here, all the style I love. This is London Town! So the idea of a wedding here seemed pretty good. I was a little bummed out that everybody couldn’t be there, but it was always going to be that way for us, so that’s why we had this huge reception in LA which turned into a second wedding.

Why did Gavin have his dog as his best man?
[Puts on baby voice]That’s Gavin’s little friend. He goes everywhere with him.

The best man usually makes a speech. Did he?
[Smiles stiffly] No.

You were brought up strict Roman Catholic…
I didn’t know any different. I was really happy about it in a way. It gave me a lot of security and a lot of morals and boundaries. I think it moulded who I am.

So, you don’t rebel?
No, I was very passive. I was the peacemaker in the family. I’m not a fighter. The person I fight with is my husband, poor thing… I hate that when you say something and you think about it and you’re like, “That was really bad”. But I feel like it [Catholicism] was really good for me. I had a lot of spiritual moments when I was a teenager and I want to get back there some day. People in rock ‘n’ roll or music, they always have that kind of bad past – “I was beaten down but that’s why I’m still here” kind a thing, but that’s not really me.

But weren’t your parents especially strict?
Crazy! Like, if you were walking to school in some outfit they’re like, “You’re not wearing that!” and make me go home and change. As soon as I could get away with cutting my shirt this short [points to midriff] I did. That was my rebellion. I pierced my nose when I was 25 years old and my mom didn’t talk to me for two months.

You’re about to appear in Martin Scorcese’s new movie, The Aviator…
I’m, like, one minute in it, but it was so fun. The attention to detail, though! I got this call recently saying, “Martin couldn’t understand one of the words you said and he wants you to re-do it.” So they sent a car for me, brought me in, we have one day of recording for that one line. I was like “Whoa, this is tedious work you guys and girls do.”

What were you expecting? Glamour?
Yeah. But I guess that’s what it’s like in the studio, too. The only difference is, I’m not in charge, Martin Scorsese was in charge.

Are you a control freak?
Control is everything. On this album, I’ve let people in a lot but it’s been great. Like the song Cool. [Madonna, TLC and Pink producer] Dallas Austin heard my song Underneath It All and got inspired to write a new song called Cool which he could never finish about his ex-girlfriend and all the bullshit of breaking up and how he wanted to be OK. We finished the thing in 15 minutes. I didn’t write all of the melody – I’m ashamed, I want to say that I did – but I also know how magical it is that somebody could be so inspired by my song that they write one.

You claim things “just happen” to you without planning. That’s pretty hard to swallow…
I don’t know, I always thought of myself as a pretty lazy girl. I hate work. So I don’t really understand how I get things done. But I guess I’m not the person I used to be. The passion takes over. When you create things and they happen, it’s addictive.

Gwen Stefani uncrosses her legs and gets up quickly, clearly relieved to be back off duty again. She thinks the record is almost there – she’s almost nailed the track she’s been recording with Dr Dre. “So I hope you like it all,” she says sweetly. It’s a rare moment of self-doubt, her guard dropping for a split-second. Then she pauses and her diva persona kicks in again.
“What am I talking about?” she says, stamping her foot. “Of course you’ll love it. It’s, like, the fucking wickedest!”

Gwen Stefani blows our minds once again. By Peter Davis, Photographs by Richard Phibbs.

It’s Gwen Stefani’s 33rd birthday, and the scene in No Doubt’s dressing room at an auditorium in downtown Los Angeles is cluttered and chaotic. Stefani’s operatic voice booms from the sound check as she belts out the song “Bathwater.” Five large pizza boxes and cases of Coca Cola, Diet Coke and bottled water are stacked near an enormous bouquet of birthday flowers. Drummer Adrian Young’s wife, Nina, strolls by cuddling their toddler son, who has been dressed in a black jumpsuit with skull-and-crossbones buttons. Techies race back and forth, fueled by venti lattes from Starbucks.

“I’m burnt, dude,” says Stefani, who wed Bush lead singer Gavin Rossdale in September, as a blue-haired assistant hands her a cappuccinos. Her sweet voice has a Southern California sufer-girl twang. “I had 10 days to plan my wedding, and now I’m going on tour,” she says. “I have so much stuff going on. In January I’m taking the month off. Gavin and I, we don’t know what we’re gonna do-just hang out and not talk to anybody.”

Sporting a rehearsal outfit of Ron Herman and a blue-and-white mesh tank top, with her long, white-blond hair framing her face, Stefani is just as beautiful as she looked in the photographs of her in her pale-pink couture John Galliano wedding dress. Stefani and Rossdale actually tied the knot twice. The first ceremony, performed by the Church of England, was held on September 14 in London, where the “I dos” were said in front of 130 people-family members and friends like Stefani’s ex, 32-year-old No Doubt bassist Tony Kanal. After a honeymoon on the Italian island of Capri, the pair flew back to Los Angeles, where they repeated their vows privately for a Catholic priest and the couple’s parents. Finally, on September 28, Jimmy Iovine, chairman of No Doubt’s label Interscope, gave the newlyweds the ultimate present: a lavish, enormous wedding celebration at his Beverly Hills home, with guests like Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston. “I didn’t know what level it was going to be at,” Stefani gushes, widening her brown eyes. “It was beyond! It was the most spectacular event I’ve ever been to. Everyone’s mouth was on the floor. I didn’t think I”d be emotional the second time around, but I was.”

Stefani’s blonde, bottle-rocket looks have landed her in magazines as different as Vogue and Vibe-proof that the singer transcends all age and racial boundaries. Her ability to transform and reinvent her public persona are sure to give her a career trajectory like another blond pop dynamo, Madonna. Part of her enduring appeal is her daring fashion sense. Raised in a conservative Catholic household in Anaheim, California (home of Disneyland), she has a look that is part cartoon, part Latina home girl. From bindis to braces to Jean Harlow hairdos, Stefani’s changing looks have kept the Gwen-abes busy trying to re-create her style. With help from her mother and friends, she has always designer her own clothes and stage costumes, so it’s only natural that one day she would start her own clothing company. With her business partner, Andrea Lieberman, Stefani is launching Lamb, an edgy fashion line that will hit stores in Fall 2003. The line’s name comes from her moniker for her dog. “‘Lamb’ is anything cute singer explains. “It’s basically the clothes I wear. I want it to be my style, so I can wear them. I don’t know what it will evolve into. I don’t know if people will like it nor not. I don’t know anything about fashion, I’m still learning. It’s just another creative outlet for me to do, and it’s exciting.”

Armies of Gwen clones crowd every No Doubt concert, but Stefani says she is still surprised that she is a role model. “I never thought I would have an impact,” she claims. “I was a really passive person growing up. I had a really creative, talented, hyperactive older brother. I’d do whatever he said; I liked what he liked. Anything he did, I did.” This brother, Eric, started No Doubt in 1986 with singer John Spence, and 17-year-old Gwen provided back-up vocals. Then Spence killed himself with a gun in a public park in 1987. With Gwen stepping in as lead singer, the band (which at the time included Kanal on bass, Tom Dumont on guitar and Adrian Young on drums) recorded Tragic Kingdom in 1995. The record sold 14 million copies (Eric Stefani, who dropped out of the group seven years ago, is now an artist and a contributor to The Simpsons.) Gwen became an instant MTV superstar. “After living at home with my parents and going to college and making this record that I thought no one would ever hear, it was like, ‘Who am I? What the hell in happening?’”

As a teen, Stefani didn’t find many women to look up to in rock music. “I remember in high school, I couldn’t like Madonna,” she admits with deadpan seriousness. “It was high school. There were rules. I was into ska and rockabilly- bands like Fishbone and Madness. It wasn’t until later that I discovered Debbie Harry, who was everything I loved. She was glamorous,and she got up on stage and she rocked. Now, of course, as you get older, you see someone like Madonna, who has a career that lasts and keeps people interested so long, and I have a lot of respect for her.” Stefani complains that when she first started there was little room for women in the mail-dominated world of bands. “Girls were like, ‘What does she think she’s doing up there?’-that kind of attitude. Then it started to turn around to, ‘She’s me. She’s representing me.’ I think it’s amazing to be in a band as a girl. Girls come to the concerts, and they feel like they can relate to you-to the lyrics, or maybe they just like the way I do my hair. It’s really cool that I can do that for them. I love it.”

These days, all anyone wants to talk about is her love life, which has been followed by fans of No Doubt’s pop-ska music for years. Her breakup with Kanal in 1994 inspired the hit ‘Ex Girlfriend.” She says the ballad “A Simple Kind of Life” (from No Doubt’s sophomore album, 1999’s Return of Saturn) – with lyrics like, “And all I needed was a simple man/ So I could be a wife”-has “a lot to do with Gavin.” Today, on her birthday, Stefani reports that she is more mature and ready to start a family. “I want to be a grandma,” she confesses, smiling. “I love my 30s so far. Of course, I’m really vain, like we all are, and I’m probably more vain because I’m being looked at all the time and judged. I”m sure in a couple of days I’ll look in the mirror and go, ‘Oh, my God! Look at that and that and that.’ But turning 30 has been so cool. I just want to live life.”

During the making of Return of Saturn, Stefani was in a deep-blue funk. “I was lost,” she recalls, staring off into space. “The making of that record was a growing phase. You can hear it in the songs. I didn’t know how to write songs when I did Tragic Kingdom. I kind of figured it out. I really wanted to be a good songwriter. I wrote in my journal and cried. Ugggh! It was such a serious mood. You can see it in my style. I had pink hair, but I didn’t know what I was doing. I was turning 30 and going through a weird phase.”

Stefani’s current ebullient state of mind is evident on the band’s latest disc, the up-beat Rock Steady. “There’s a real freshness to [the album], because nothing was planned,” she says. “It was like, be fun – write a song about, whatever, how cute your boyfriend is.” Much of Rock Steady was recorded in Port Antonio, Jamaica, and boasts co-producers and co-writers like Sly and Robbie, Prince, William Orbit, the Neptunes, Rick Ocasek, Nellee Hooper and Dave Stewart. “We had all these different energies,” she says. “When you do a record with all different people, you have to bring it together phonetically. We had no game plan, but everything fell into place.”

The list of artists Stefani has collaborated with is also impressive. She’s scored hit with Eve on “Let Me Blow Ya Mind” and Moby on “South Side.” “Working with Gwen was wonderful,” Moby recalls. “When she came into the studio, I expected her to be a lager-than-life rock star, but she was so sweet and down-to-earth. It was the same when we worked on the “South Side” video. She has this very focused work ethic that is impressive, and she’s a lot of fun to be around.”

Stefani returns the love. “I’m so lucky people ask me,” she says. “The song with Eve had the most impact on me. I’d never worked with a rapper. Doing the video, it was like stepping into a whole other world. I love the idea of different worlds coming together. It was what ska was all about in the first place. And I got exposed to a whole other audience. Even just walking around New York, people who I didn’t think would know who I am were like, ‘Hey, what’s up?’”

On the top of Stefani’s with list for future collaborators is Dr. Dre. “He’s on my label, so I told them, if he ever calls or wants me for anything, I’ll be there!” Although Stefani and Rossdale listen and critique each other’s work, they have yet to cut a track together. “We’ve never been creative as a team like that. I would love to, but I feel shy about it somehow. It’s the one thing we haven’t done together.”

After No Doubt’s tour ends in November, Stefani and the band are going to lay low. “We don’t really have any plans. We’ll do whatever feels right at the time. Right no, I don’t think anyone feels inspired to write a record.” The main thing on Stefani’s mind at the moment is finishing up today’s sound check so she can hightail it home to hubby Rossdale, who is cooking a special birthday dinner. No Doubt will soon be on the road, playing big stadiums with bands like Garbage and even opening a few dates for the Rolling Stones.

Stefani finishes her cappuccino and sighs. “Being a performer and being on tour is really repetitive,” she says, rolling her eyes. “It’s not very creative. I really enjoy writing a record more than touring. Performing is fun, but it’s like, hey, so is eating ice cream. You don’t want to do it every minute of your life. It’s like, okay, something else now, please.”

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

No one tells Gwen Stefani what to do – thank God! We get to the roots of her rock’n'roll style. By Gia Kourlas. Photographed by Gilles Bensimon.

Gwen Stefani doesn’t like to be made over and why should she? “I always do my own makeup and hair,” she declares. “Every time I’ve experimented, it’s been a disaster.” Once you get past the obvious – that her powerful vocals have been a trademark of No Doubt for 15 years and that she writes most of the music herself – the coolest thing about Gwen is that totally original look. And at 32, she says she’s having more fun with her look – and her life – than ever. No Doubt’s latest album, Rock Steady, is an irresistible dance party in disc form, and Gwen’s relationship with fiancé Gavin Rossdlae of Bush seems pretty rock steady too. Great! Because what we really wanted to grill Gwen about was her personal style, and, lucky for us, she was willing to play along…

Were you a nonconformist in high school?
Well I think that for young kids, it’s all about being like everyone else. So I had to have my sports shirt, and there was the zip-up sweatshirt that I wore every day. But when I hit puberty and found music, all of a sudden I wanted to be unique. In high school I did a lot of sewing and thrift-store shopping. My mum sews 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 made Grace Kelly’s dress from the movie Rear Window.

Wow, really?
My mum made me that dress! [Laughs] It was black velvet with a white chiffon skirt. We also made the dress from The Sound Of Music that Julie Andrews wears when she sings I Have Confidence. It was tweed with a drop waist, and I wore it the first time I was ever on stage at the school talent show.

Do you still have that tweed dress?
I have all the dresses we made.

What happened to the 40s dress you wore in the Don’t Speak video?
I got that at a thrift store, like five years before we shot the video. It smelled so bad that I never wore it. It’s beautiful fabric, that really old rayon that just hangs beautifully. But it’s a real mess!

Did your mom sew pretty much all of your dresses or did you also?
My Mom – but I made a lot of my own stuff, too. I could never do zippers very well. When we were on tour right after the first record came out, I made three or four dresses, which were all from the same pattern that I’d created myself. It was kind of a corset-style drop waist with a cheerleader skirt, and it looked like there was a white blouse underneath. I always made them in cartoon-y bright colours like bright reds, blues and yellows. Underneath I wore my boxer shorts and fishnets and Doc Martens. I had my little vibe going on.

Have you ever thought about starting your own clothing line?
Yeah! I want to. I talk about it all the time, especially now that I’m inspired again. But it’s hard to do a lot of things at once well. That’s why I haven’t had a kid yet. I want to do that well, and I want to be a good wife, but I’m so busy and I have so much passion for what I’m doing… I’m having a great time! [Laughs] So I think that if I do a clothing line, it has to be like everything else I do – it has to be homegrown, it has to be real. I wouldn’t just do it to make money, because I could do that easily. All I would have to do is the say the words – “Here’s my accessory line” and it would be nuts. I love that our fans get inspired and show up to our gigs in home-made gear. That is the coolest thing – I’ll never get sick of that. They inspire me.

Who else inspires you? Let’s play a word-association game with the names of some stylish ladies.
I don’t know everybody, but okay.

Grace Kelly?
Gorgeous.

Stevie Nicks?
I love her. Cool as hell. I relate to her a lot. And there are lots of similarities in the stories of our bands. [Laughs]

True enough. Veronica Lake?
The “Hey Baby” video, because I tried to copy her hair! [Laughs]

Debbie Harry?
Me on the last record. I really tried to rip her off hard on that one.

Jean Harlow?
She was dope-ass, she had those skinny eyebrows and attitude. She was way ahead of her time.

Madonna?
I can’t give you one word. I have to give you a long winded explanation of my relationship with her. [Laughs]

Yes, please.
When I was in high school, I was really into ska music. And I was 15 or 16, so there were lots of rules. If something was really popular, you’re like “I’m not into that.” Madonna was huge, but I was really into ska. I was like Madonna? Whatever.
But I think that, secretly, I was interested. I went to her concert in ‘87 at Anaheim Stadium, because I was in love with Tony [Kanal, No Doubt’s bass player] and his mum worked for the council and got free tickets. So we went and we kissed in the parking lot and saw the show. It was amazing. But I was never really a huge fan of hers until recently. I just look at her body of work now, and I have a whole lot of respect for her. I know what it’s like to be a girl in a man’s world. I’ve met her a few times. She is such a cool girl. The thing is that I relate more to someone like Deborah Harry, because she was in a band. It’s like two different worlds. But as far as paving a little space for some girls could come after her [Expels breath] – Madonna did that.

What do you think of Britney Spears and her image these days?
There’s room for everybody, and there’s always room for pure entertainment. But I’m surprised at how fast she’s moved on. I think when you’re in a band, the cool thing is that you have time to grow. Like I only just started wearing heels and getting more comfortable with my sexual side. Before, my whole vibe was based upon the idea that I wanted to be a guy – but I wanted to wear a lot of make-up. Being a girl in a band means that I want to do my hair and wear cute clothes, but when I get on stage, I want to rock out. But lately I feel that if I show a sexier side – and if you put on high heels, then you automatically do – it’s okay. I’ve earned my way.

It’s like a rite of passage?
Exactly. I feel that some of the younger artists should just hold on to their youth a little longer – it’s like, dude, you have so much ahead of you! But I can’t say anything, I could never imagine myself having commercial success at that age. I would go crazy.

If you hadn’t got into music, would you be a stylist or a make-up artist or something like that?
I was a make-up artist. I worked at a department store at Anaheim Plaza, which was a pretty low-grade mall with dollar stores. Different types of she-males would come in wanting to get their makeup done. [Laughs] It was such a rewarding job to help people feel better about themselves by putting on a little of this and a little of that. But if I hadn’t gotten into music I don’t think I’d still be working at the mall, I would have completed college. I can’t imagine going back now. I learned all the important things I needed because I didn’t want to feel like a stupid person – but as far as art classes go, I’d love to go back.

Your style is so immaculate, so put together. Do you ever just kick back in a sweatshirt and no make-up?
[In wonder] Immaculate! Oh, dude, yeah! Of course I do. On tour, for the most part, I have two outfits that I wear every night on stage. I just rotate the colours. During the day I wear my workout clothes. Publicity time is really fun because it’s all about the clothes, and lately I’m really into it again. I feel all energized. I went to the fabric store to make a skirt for my sister’s wedding and I freaked out! I was like, Oh my God, I haven’t been here in so long! I bought fabric and had loads of pants made up.

What do you think about the way Joan Rivers and everybody else – including this magazine – critique celebrity fashion?
I get totally seduced by it all. I love to open People to see what everyone’s wearing. But it’s different when it’s me. What’s that one I always get in? “When bad clothes happen to good people.” [Laughs] I kind of consider that a compliment. The clothes they consider bad I usually like!

Does Gavin have a favourite outfit?
He has really good taste. He’s influenced me a lot, to grow up a bit with the way I dress. He’s really anti bright colours – everything I am! He doesn’t have a favorite outfit. But I definitely try to impress him. He influences me when I’m shopping. I think, Will he like this?

Do you go for more conservative things now?
Maybe I just don’t go for the really bright colours as much. [Laughs] I have to grow up. I can’t just stay the same forever.

How have you evolved as a songwriter?
With the last album, Return Of Saturn, I decided I just wanted to get really good at writing. I started keeping a journal, and I’d never done that. I got the lyrics and poems of Joni Mitchell, which are just genius – the most beautiful way of putting thoughts down. She really inspired me. And then Gavin told me about Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar and I was so inspired by that – and by her journals. But with Rock Steady we wanted it to be a little more free. I tried to make my writing more conversational. I didn’t get into my whole “being inspired” thing – I would be inspired by a day. even a moment. And I didn’t labor over it – I tried to write stuff in an afternoon and then go and record it.

You’ve collaborated with so many great people - Eve and Moby, and now Prince and Sly and Robbie on Rock Steady. Who else would you like to work with?
The Thompson Twins. I would love to make a rap song with those guys. Or have them remix one of our tracks.

You grew up in the ’80s but don’t seem embarrassed by ’80s fashion. Do you really like it?
I love the idea of something that’s really bad becoming really good again. The ’80s were an awesome time for music. And plus it was the backdrop of my life, so of course I love it and embrace it!

Did you have fun on TRL in December?
Yeah. We’ve been on so many times, but we were so excited and nervous. I didn’t think I could get that nervous again! We kind of came off as nerds, but oh well.

Do you consider yourself kind of dorky?
[Pauses and giggles] I’m pretty cool now. I always get really freaked out when I start thinking about how people see me. It’s a weird lifestyle. We have this web fan forum, and you can read everything the fans have to say. There’s a lot of negative stuff, and I don’t know if I’m going to read it anymore. No Doubt’s never done anything that anyone’s told us to do. Like I don’t wear anything that anyone tells me to wear. The whole idea of No Doubt is freedom – creating something on your own. To try to get better and grow. It frustrates me when people get that wrong and think that they own you. The idea of fans is amazing, because they give you your life, but the idea of anyone, a fan or not, trying to tell you what music you should do? I don’t do it for anyone except myself in the first place. It’s an art.

No Doubt’s Gwen Stefani on Britney, learning to walk in heels and the trouble with zippers.

Gwen Stefani is the kind of girl that other girls want to be. She’s in control and in No Doubt… where she writes most of the songs and gets to live out her rock-star fantasies night after night. Then there was that video with Eve, the platinum blonde hair (and life), bee-stung lips and the gawky grace of her sun kissed bod. And did we even mention the fact that her snuggle-bunny is Bush frontman Gavin Rossdale?

But the main reason why we’d want to be Gwen is the mountains of clothes and accessories (so we’re shallow, so sue us) that she’s accumulated over the many years she’s been fronting No Doubt. So although we love No Doubt’s just-released album, Rock Steady, an irresistible CD shaped dance party if ever we heard one, what we really wanted to grill Gwen about is her personal style…

Were you a playground rebel?
Well I think that for young kids, it’s all about being like everyone else. So I had to have my sports shirt, and there was the zip-up sweatshirt that I wore every day. But when I hit puberty and found music, all of a sudden I wanted to be unique. In high school I did a lot of sewing and thrift-store shopping. My mum sews 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 made Grace Kelly’s dress from the movie Rear Window.

Wow, really?
My mum made me that dress! [Laughs] It was black velvet with a white chiffon skirt. We also made the dress from The Sound Of Music that Julie Andrews wears when she sings I Have Confidence. It was tweed with a drop waist, and I wore it the first time I was ever on stage at the school talent show.

What happened to the 40s dress you wore in the Don’t Speak video?
I got that at a thrift store, like five years before we shot the video. It smelled so bad that I never wore it. It’s beautiful fabric, that really old rayon that just hangs beautifully. But it’s a real mess!

Tell us about you adventures with needles and thread
I used to make a lot of my own stuff, but I could never do zippers very well. When we were on tour right after the first record came out, I made three or four dresses, which were all from the same pattern that I’d created myself. It was kind of a corset-style drop waist with a cheerleader skirt, and it looked like there was a white blouse underneath. I always made them in cartoon-y bright colours like bright reds, blues and yellows. Underneath I wore my boxer shorts and fishnets and Doc Martens. I had my little vibe going on.

Have you ever thought about starting your own clothing line?
I talk about it all the time but it’s hard to do a lot of things well at once. I’m so busy and I have so much passion for what I’m doing. So I think that if I do a clothing line, it has to be like everything else I do, home-grown; it has to be real. I wouldn’t just do it to make money, although I could do that easily. All I would have to do is the say the words “Here’s my accessory line” and it would be nuts. But the thing I love about our fans is that they get inspired and show up to our gigs in home-made gear. That is the coolest thing, I’ll never get sick of that. Our fans inspire me.

Who else inspires you? Let’s play a word-association game with the names of some stylish ladies. Grace Kelly?
Gorgeous.

Stevie Nicks?
I love her. Cool as hell. I relate to her a lot. And there are lots of similarities in the stories of our bands.

Veronica Lake?
I tried to copy her hair in the Hey Baby video!

Debbie Harry?
Me on the last record. I really tried to rip her off hard on that one.

Jean Harlow?
She was dope-ass, she had those skinny eyebrows and attitude. She was way ahead of her time.

Madonna?
I can’t give you one word. I have to give you a long winded explanation of my relationship with her. [Laughs]

Yes, please.
When I was in high school, I was really into ska music. And I was 15 or 16, so there were lots of rules. If something was really popular, you’re like “I’m not into that.” Madonna was huge, but I was really into ska. I was like Madonna? Whatever.
But I think that, secretly, I was interested. I went to her concert in ‘87 at Anaheim Stadium, because I was in love with Tony [Kanal, No Doubt's bass player] and his mum worked for the council and got free tickets. So we went and we kissed in the parking lot and saw the show. It was amazing.
But I was never really a huge fan of hers until recently. I just look at her body of work now, and I have a whole lot of respect for her. I know what it’s like to be a girl in a man’s world. I’ve met her a few times. She is a cool girl. She created this space so that other girls could come after her and make their mark… Madonna did that.

What do you think of Britney Spears and her image?
There’s room for everybody, and there’s always room for pure entertainment. I’m surprised at how fast she’s moved on. I wish that some of the younger artists would realise that it’s OK to hold on to their youth a little longer. It’s like, “Dude, you have so much ahead of you!” But I can’t say anything, I could never imagine myself having commercial success at that age. I would go crazy.
I think when you’re in a band, the cool thing is that you have time to grow. Like I only just started wearing heels and getting more comfortable with my sexual side. Before, my whole vibe was based upon the idea that I wanted to be a guy – but I wanted to wear a lot of make-up. Being a girl in a band means that I want to do my hair and wear cute clothes, but when I get on stage, I want to rock out.

If you hadn’t got into music, would you be a stylist or a make-up artist or something like that?
I was a make-up artist! I worked at a department store at Anaheim Plaza, which was a pretty low-grade mall with dollar stores. It was such a rewarding job to help people feel better about themselves by putting on a little of this and a little of that.
But if I hadn’t gotten into music I don’t think I’d still be working at the mall, I would have completed college. i mean, I’ve learned all the important things I needed because I didn’t want to feel stupid, but I’d love to go back to do something creative, like an art class.

You always look pretty immaculate. Do you ever just kick back in a sweatshirt and no make-up?
Oh, dude, yeah! Of course I do. On tour, I have two outfits that I wear every night on stage. I just rotate the colours. During the day I wear my workout clothes. That’s why I love doing photo shoots and TV appearances, because it’s all about the clothes, and lately I feel like I’ve rediscovered fashion. I went to the fabric store to make a skirt for my sister’s wedding and I freaked out! I was like, “Oh my God, I haven’t been here in so long!” I bought a ton of fabric and had loads of pants made up.

Does Gavin have a favourite outfit?
He has really good taste. He’s influenced me a lot, to grow up a bit with the way I dress. He doesn’t love bright colours, which is everything I am! I suppose that I do wear slightly more conservative things now, or maybe I just don’t go for the really bright colours as much. I have to grow up. I can’t just stay the same forever.

Do you think this new, grown-up outlook on life has influenced your music?
With the last album, Return Of Saturn, I decided I just wanted to get really good at writing. I started keeping a journal, and I’d never done that. I got the lyrics and poems of Joni Mitchell, which are just genius – she has the most beautiful way of putting thoughts down. She really inspired me. And then Gavin told me about Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar and I was so inspired by that and by her journals.
But with Rock Steady we wanted it to be a little more free. I tried to make my writing more conversational. I would be inspired by a day. even a moment. And I didn’t labour over it – I tried to write stuff in an afternoon and then go and record it.

How do you think you’ve changed in the years since the band started?
Things have changed. We have fans now, which is amazing because they give you your life, but we’re still rebels at heart. Like I don’t wear anything that anyone tells me to wear. The whole idea of No Doubt is freedom; creating something on your own. To try to get better and grow. And I’m pretty cool now. or at least I hope I am!

Gwen Stefani and No Doubt are back. But maybe not for very long. She talks to Caroline Sullivan

The dressing rooms at Top of the Pops are uniformly tiny cubby holes with barely enough space for a dispirited pile of weathered ham sandwiches, let alone people. Jennifer Lopez supposedly commandeered 15 of these rooms last time she was here. No Doubt have two and, despite being the band’s sole woman, Gwen Stefani has democratically crammed in with bassist Tony Kanal, while guitarist Tom Dumont and drummer Adrian Young are sharing a cupboard down the corridor. There’s not even room for their entourage of two – their manager and her assistant – who find themselves relegated to an anteroom wistfully known as the Star Bar.

On seeing the 10ft x 6ft space where she’ll be spending the next three hours waiting to perform No Doubt’s new single, Hey Baby, Stefani flops into a chair and laconically asks: “Can we turn down the lights?” It’s not a slur on the decor, even if the dressing room has apparently been furnished with cast-offs from a Warsaw office block. She was up late last night, celebrating her first London gig in three years, which went particularly well. The light is dimmed and Stefani cautiously removes her sunglasses. At 32, she still has the peachy skin of a 20-year-old, and her tiredness is hardly visible. “Better,” she says, sliding into a roughly horizontal position.

“As comebacks go, up there with Elvis,” panted last week’s NME, which is over-egging it, but it does convey the unexpected enthusiasm generated by No Doubt’s return. Until recently, they seemed destined for pop-footnotery, remembered only for the leaky 1997 hit Don’t Speak, and the accompanying 12m selling album, Tragic Kingdom. Subsequent singles and an album in 2000, Return of Saturn, underperformed, as the euphemism goes. Few would have bet on their making one of the splashiest returns of recent times, charting at number two with Hey Baby, and unveiling a new album, Rock Steady, to highly favourable reviews.

Much of the new-found interest is down to Stefani herself. Fifteen years after joining the band formed by her brother in Anaheim, California (home of Disneyland, hence the sardonic play on Magic Kingdom), she has suddenly been deemed of-the-moment. Chiming with the current taste for unconventional female stars such as Chloe Sevigny and Sarah Jessica Parker, her camp, goofball blondeness and tremulous vibrato are now hip, causing her to be reassessed by many who had never taken her or the group seriously.

“Any perception of you is weird. You have your own life and reality, and anything people might think of you is their own perception,” she says, uncomfortable with personal celebrity in a way that pop’s other Italian Catholic princess, Madonna, would find inexplicable. She shoves her sunglasses back on. “It’s like when you don’t see someone for a while, and they say, ‘Your hair’s grown’, or, ‘You’re so skinny’, and you don’t realise it about yourself.”

Stefani’s activities are now routinely reported in gossip magazines, which run shots of her undulating through awards ceremonies and restaurants. Her chum Marilyn Manson boasted of deliberately peeing on her toilet seat, presumably a form of Hollywood greeting. She even bagged a front-row seat at Vivienne Westwood’s fashion show, a sure sign of someone who gets her calls returned. Often, she’s pictured with her rock star fiance, Gavin “Big in America” Rossdale, but where photographers once aimed to get the best shot of Rossdale, it’s now Stefani they focus on.

One reason, perhaps, is that she undersells herself. She belittlingly claims to be an “ordinary, suburban” girl from “a goody two-shoes” family who lived at home till she was nearly 30 (not all that unusual in Italian-American households). “I didn’t travel at all till Tragic Kingdom. I’d been to Italy, like, 15 years before. One of the best parts of the band is meeting people.”

One reason she was attracted to Rossdale, she has said, is that he wants a wife and children. She’s protective of her London-born boyfriend, whose derivative grunge band Bush sell by the million in America but are less successful at home. He’s only her second boyfriend, and their five-year relationship has been bumpy. He was often “linked” with women such as Andrea Corr and Natalie Appleton, and he and Stefani broke up several times. During one separation, she wrote a bitter song called Ex-Girlfriend, which brooded: “I always knew I’d end up your ex-girlfriend.”

According to Bush biographer Karen Shook: “I got the impression Gwen does that female thing of thinking that she’s so normal and he’s so deep.” On cue, Stefani muses: “My boyfriend told me to read The Bell Jar, and I got totally into Sylvia Plath’s saga and journals and Ted Hughes. She died across the street from our house in Primrose Hill. The purple house.”

The couple’s paparazzi appeal is obvious. Stefani is the sunshiny yin to his studiedly dark yang. She thinks their relationship was predestined and talks of seeing him on TV before they met and knowing they would be together. “I didn’t have a choice; I met him [while supporting Bush on an American tour] and fell for him. We got engaged on New Year’s Day. We had a night out on London and woke up at three in the afternoon and he asked me. I’m so happy.”

Her only other relationship, with bassist Tony Kanal, ended with his leaving her after seven years, a crushing experience that inspired Don’t Speak. “I’d never envisaged moving on after breaking up with Tony.” She glances at Kanal, next to her, and fondly pats his knee. “I’m grateful to have him as a friend.”

Her new-found coolness could turn out to be fleeting, but there is a sense of having permanently crossed a line. On one side, the zany frontwoman of an achingly naff Los Angeles ska band (ska was mysteriously popular in southern California when No Doubt formed in 1987) – on the other, the confidently stylish leader of a quartet that’s suddenly had its lease on the charts renewed.

Jostled along by Jamaican dancehall rhythms, Hey Baby is good enough to almost erase the drippy memory of Don’t Speak, which was number one for three long weeks in 1997. Its parent album, Rock Steady (the title is another nod to Jamaica, where it was partially recorded, accounting for its joyous pop-reggae slant) is by some way the best of their five LPs, including Tragic Kingdom.

Like most women who front male bands, Stefani innocently professes surprise that she gets the lion’s share of the attention. Echoing Debbie Harry (who wore badges proclaiming “Blondie is a group!”), she refuses to be interviewed alone, and was outraged when American music mag Spin computer-erased the other three from a cover photo.

Kanal, though, is resigned to it. He tells a story about Prince flying the band to Paisley Park to play on one of his songs. When they arrived, it was Stefani alone who was ushered into the studio, while Kanal, Dumont and Young ended up twiddling their thumbs outside. “We expected to work with him, but it didn’t work out that way,” he shrugs. But Prince did make up for it by producing the Rock Steady song Waiting Room.

“But this record is all about having fun!” Stefani quickly interjects, pushing her outsized wool beret off her forehead in a conciliatory gesture. Kanal waves his hand in a what-the-hell way and props his feet on a low table. Born in London of Asian parents who emigrated to California when he was a child (“In LA, people think I’m Mexican, black, Hispanic – never Indian”), he has a phlegmatic British attitude to his place in the No Doubt scheme of things. Just as well – fashion magazines approach Stefani to model, and other musicians seek her out for the tomboyish sass she imparts to a track. She has worked with golden boy Moby as well as Prince, but it was her guest vocal on rapper Eve’s hit Let Me Blow Ya Mind (rarely off the radio last summer) that zapped her to iconic coolness.

I tell her about hearing Alan McGee raving to friends in a restaurant that the song was the best thing he’d heard all year. She leans forward, pleased. “Dr Dre called and I went down and sang. The band were like, ‘Go for it!’” She casts a sidelong glance at Kanal, who grins encouragingly. “It was fascinating to go into Eve’s world, so different from anything I’ve done before. When I left I was like, ‘Whoa, I’ve just worked with Dre!’”

It provided an entree to an audience that had probably never bought a No Doubt album. As Danny Eccleston of Q magazine puts it: “She’s taken on board that bling bling R&B lustre, which gave her a sense of being culturally aware of that world. She looks very modern now. She’s always been colourful, with those cropped tops and crazy shoes, but now R&B is like that, and she fits in.” Her biggest problem these days seems to be accepting that she’s first among equals in No Doubt, but a couple of years ago she was depressed and shellshocked by two years of touring the blockbusting Tragic Kingdom, then facing the poor performance of Return of Saturn.

“I had a very hard time making Return of Saturn. Tragic was all about [Stefani and Kanal's] relationship, and then I went on tour for two years. I felt like I was fine when I got home, but then I went into a depression, which has never happened before. Compared to most people, I wasn’t really depressed, but I was figuring myself out. Saturn was my coming-of-age album.”

She makes light of it now, but in an interview with the journalist Emma Forrest at the time of Saturn’s release, she confessed to feeling “insecure and jealous and paranoid”. Asked about it now, she frowns. “I never said insecure or paranoid. I’m not that way at all. I never said that.” (Forrest maintains: “She definitely said it. I felt great empathy for her. She seemed so sad.”)

Cheerful again, she says something very Stefani: “I’ve blossomed so much with this album, but I remember something I said in Jamaica. I was sitting on a raft and talking about how we’ll make one more album and then I’ll get pregnant.” At this moment, she’s every inch suburban Gwen, even getting misty as she says: “I mean I’m 32 and I think about babies a lot. “