NW (March 26th 2007)

The Rise and Rise of Gwen Stefani

As if global domination of the music industry wasn't enough, Gwen Stefani has now added fashion icon and world's coolest mum to her list of credits

Can Gwen Stefani do no wrong? With her musical career going from strength to strength and her distinctive fashion label taking off, the sometime actress has now added the title of Coolest Mum In The World to her string of credits. A-List tries to keep up with her "Gwenpire".

Having already sold 26 million records as the lead singer of Californian ska-pop band No Doubt, recent years have seen Gwen Stefani add movie star, fashion designer, style icon, wife and successful solo artist to her list of achievements. But for Gwen, it wasn't enough. Having babies was always a burning desire for her, even before her September 2002 wedding to British rocker Gavin Rossdale.

"I've wanted a baby since I was a baby," she admits. "I've always wanted to do the family thing."

Making the choice between career and family is something many women can relate to, but for someone in such a high-profile -- and lucrative -- position as Gwen, the stakes were all the higher. Would her young fans feel alienated? What if the style icon -- perpetually porcelain-skinned, platinum-tressed and crimson-lipped -became a frazzled, frumpy mum? And, no small consideration for the famously weight-conscious star, would her washboard stomach be lost forever? But Gwen needn't have worried; motherhood was a win-win situation for the plucky- and ducky- star. Far from detracting from her achievements, having son Kingston in May 2005 has simply added to her tiber-cool status -- not to mention her happiness.

"He's the greatest thing in the world," she enthuses about his impact on her life. "There was no transition. It was just like, 'Where were you?'"

In fact, Gwen was able to successfully integrate Kingston into the hectic schedule that went with the release of her second solo album, The Sweet Escape, in 2006. She takes him with her ever)where she goes thanks to the inclusion of a nanny in an already large entourage that includes assistants, stylists, dancers, a manager and a personal trainer.

"There's this huge team of us always hanging out together, so he gets to see the same people every day," she says. "He's been to every studio in LA, New York, London … he's this very cool, chilled-out little guy."

Motherhood may be proving to he a breeze, but her pregnancy, to Gwen's surprise, wasn't. "I thought I was going to be one of those 'Mother Nature' girls," she says. "I figured, 'I'll just squeeze it out' because I'm really strong and I workout and stuff … [but] pregnancy was challenging in a way I didn't expect. It was like PMS times a million."

Then again, most women- strong or not don't have to spend the first few months of their pregnancy in the midst of their first solo tour. "I'd be crying before I was going on [stage]," she recalls. "I couldn't breathe, because when you're pregnant, you get short of breath. So I'm trying to breathe with the corset and the high heels and the nine costume changes. I was in pain. I won't go into detail, but I had really bad stomach-aches."

To make matters worse, she couldn't even admit to anyone what was making her so upset. "I didn't want people to know I was pregnant. I didn't want to become the 'Gwen Freak Circus Show watch it grow on stage'.

"It was weird being pregnant in a fishbowl situation," she continues. "Especially on the days when you feel really fat and disgusting and not cute. I felt gross and I was getting bigger and bigger."

But Stefani's strong work ethic dictated that the show must go on. And on, and on. "I know people might look at me differently and wonder why I don't take a year off. Well, I am the original Catholic girl who has all those feelings of guilt too, but Kingston's here with me. If I had to go to 'work' then I just wouldn't. I would just stay with him. But he comes everywhere with me. This isn't going to last forever, so I just want to live and enjoy it all now, and having my baby with me lust adds to the fun."

It's the classic case of having your cake and eating it too. Except that in Gwen's case, cake -- and all other treats are strictly off the menu. "It's simple math: you put this much food in, you burn that much working out. I gave myself three months -- but if I didn't have an album coming out, there's no way I would have gotten back into shape in that time."

Aside from watching her diet, she worked out with a trainer five days a week, and continued to breast feed Kingston, something that's generally said to assist post baby weight loss. "I think it gives you superhuman powers!" she jokes of breast feeding.

Still, album or no album, all that effort must have been tough on someone who was not only a new mum, but who, by her own admission, was "lazy" and "passive" as a teenager. "At high school I would think, 'All I want to do is eat and sleep,'" she says.

And the toned abs and lean legs that she shows off with her outrageous dress sense have never come naturally to her, even long before she became a mum. "All of my life I've had to work hard to stay in shape," admits Gwen. "I was a little chubby when I was younger and I didn't want to be that person forever."

It's a struggle that has all the more resonance given today's obsession with wafer-thin female stars. How does Gwen, now 37, handle the pressure to be thin? "As I get older I try not to focus on it, [but] clearly, I spend time thinking about it. It sucks that that's what is supposed to look good and that's what everyone strives to be."

And it's not just the body that she works hard at. Her style-icon stratus is a tag she wears very seriously, rarely, if ever, allowing herself to be seen looking anything but groomed and "Gwenned" to perfection. "It takes a lot of effort," she acknowledges. "Gavin jokes that my lips are permanently stained red because the lipstick hardly ever comes off, But I have to make sure I have it on before 1 leave the house who knows if someone is going to take my picture?"

If you're Gwen Stefani, it's almost guaranteed that someone is going to take your picture- fashion-wise, she's one of the most watched women in the world, rarely putting a foot wrong with her unique sense of style. Hers is a look that appeals on several levels, not least because it encompasses so many camps. As her stylist puts it, "She touches on the glamorous, the tomboy, the rockabilly girl, the disco queen. Without a shadow of a doubt, she's the most innovative [fashion icon] in music."

Which must be gratifying, given that she struggled with her image for years. "I was a fat little nerdy kid who desperately wanted to be cool," she says. "Inside my head I'm still that little geek struggling to make people like me."

Even so, as a young girl she refused to follow trends, preferring to enlist her mother's help to make her own clothes, and digging through piles of cast-offs in op-shops to create her own distinctive look. "My prom dress was a copy of the one Grace Kelly wore in Fear Window, and one of the first dresses I sang in was a copy of the tweed dress Julie Andrews wore in The Sound Of Music. I guess I always had different tastes."

Gwen's early forays into design have now found expression in her own clothing line, L.A.M.B. The label is an acronym for Love.Angel.Music. Baby, which is also the title of her 2004 debut solo album. And -- while it's not unusual for stars to dip their fingers into other money-spinning pies, lending their name and image to fragrances and fashion, rather than being an exercise in celebrity ego-flexing- this appears to be something that Gwen feels very strongly about.

"L.A.M.B. is super important and I've been working on it for four years," she says. "It's something that I am really passionate about that I can do creatively now."

As if to silence any criticism the label may attract from those sceptical about "celebrity diversification", she adds, "I know I'm right at the beginning and I have a long way to go. I've been designing clothes my whole life, but at this level I'm still a baby. [But] every collection gets better."

In any case, the figures speak for themselves. According to an industry source, L.A.M.B. and its sister label Harajuku Lovers (a more affordable collection aimed at teenage girls), are on course to post a combined $115 million in retail sales this year. As far as sidelines go, it's a lucrative one, a fact Gwen is acutely aware of. "One of the reasons I did it was that I'm not going to be doing music forever," she says. "[Fashion] is something I want to do for the rest of my life."

Vibrant and bubbly, Gwen's enthusiasm for everything she does is apparent -- to say she's passionate would be an understatement. And what's all be more charming about her is that she wears her heart very unabashedly on her super-stylish sleeve. Not only is she open and friendly in interviews, but also she has a tendency to write lyrics that are patently autobiographical.

Do**'t Speak, the 1996 single that shot No Doubt to fame, chronicled the painful break-up of her eight-year relationship with the band's bassist Tony Kanal, while her 2005 hit solo single, Cool, depicts her and Tony's current relationship as close friends.

Simple Kind Of Life, another No Doubt single, released after Gwen had been dating hubby Gavin for five years, agonises over her yearning for children -- in the video, she runs around in a wedding dress, singing "I always thought I'd be a morn/Sometimes I wish for a mistake." The baby thing came up again in What You Waiting For from her solo debut -- the tick-tock in the chorus, she says, is a direct reference to her biological dock. "I don't ever feel like I've been very secretive about who I am," she says. "My songs are basically my diaries."

There's one point, however, on which Gwen has remained resolutely tight-lipped. When it emerged shortly after her wedding to Gavin, now 39, that the groom had fathered a now teenage daughter, British model Daisy Lowe, Gwen's devastation was apparent, But she was determined to maintain a dignified silence throughout the scandal.

"Our relationship is very real, and when we got married it became even more sacred," she reasons. "But if I start talking about it more, suddenly it's out there for people to criticise and have an opinion about. And you know what? No. People don't get to do that."

She makes no hones about how much she loves being married to Gavin, although she says they try to keep the separations enforced by their rock star commitments to a minimum. "We know that after three weeks it starts to get messed up. We were very lucky to find each other and we have this ongoing crazy love affair, with its hills and valleys, like anyone else's,"

Parenthood has definitely been one of the highlights "Having Kingston has been the most romantic thing to have happened to us," she says. "He's just like another person, except that he's super cute and super entertaining."

And, of course, Gwen has wasted no time in styling him. "He finally has enough hair to do something with it, I've been trying to give him some cooler looks."

And now that she's proved so comprehensively that she can handle motherhood on top of all of her other roles and indeed, that motherhood, Gwen-style, can even enhance all of those other roles are there more babies on the way?

"It's in the itinerary, I'm ready to go!" she says, with trademark enthusiasm. "I just want to make babies and records. One solo record, two solo records. One baby, two babies. I always want more of everything!"