Newsday (Sept. 12th 2005)
Cool 2 Wear, By Design
[edited version]
But according to fashion pundits, L.A.M.B. is the one to watch. Launched in 2003, the collection's pretty-meets-gritty sensibility and realistic prices ($100-$300) has won loyal customers and healthy sales. It has inspired enough retail confidence to showcase in the windows of Bloomingdale's flagship Manhattan store during the last two weeks of September. Says Kal Ruttenstein, the store's senior VP of fashion: "We like Gwen. She's at the top of our list."
Stefani, who as a pop icon has made distinctive fashion statements on red carpets and stages, is girlishly delighted by the compliment. "It's the weirdest thing, but I feel like in the fashion world, which I know nothing about, they're sort of rooting for me. I feel I've sort of cut in line, like I should have gone to fashion school, and I couldn't have done this without doing what I do," she says, referring to her celebrity, "but I'm feeling the love for some reason."
And maybe that's why she is suddenly ready for her fashion close- up. "Nobody told me it was time to have a show. I was like, 'I'm doing a show in September' - it just felt like the right time."
Just a couple of weeks before show time, No Doubt's lead singer, 35, is up to her eyeballs. Preparing for her first national solo tour a month after fashion week and finishing a solo album due out in January, marketing her secondary line - a zippy, young collection inspired by Japanese pop culture called Harajuku Lovers - Stefani has of yet, only seen a couple of pieces from her spring L.A.M.B. collection. "It's bizarre, like it's so exciting on paper or in your head, and then you see the fabric and you're like "that looks so incredible, or what in the flip is that?"
Stefani, whose team includes the designer Zaldy and stylist Andrea Lieberman, says her fashion creativity "comes from the same place" her music does. "I always have a million ideas." Making clothes is a family affair for Stefani. "My mom did it, my grandmother did it, my great-grandmother did it, but I've never dreamed of making clothes at this level."
Her style in a nutshell, she says, is "not too girly. If I wear red lipstick and my hair like Marilyn Monroe, I have to wear a wife beater and jeans." Hence her collection for spring plays both naughty and nice. Think "Great Gatsby" with bad-girl overtones.