Harper's Bazaar (August 2016)
Gwen Stefani Rocks
After a divorce, a hit album, and a new romance with Blake Shelton, the pop star is once again making beautiful music.
The joy of interviewing Gwen Stefani is that you don't even have to glance at your questions. They sit, folded and lonely on the couch while she just talks. Candidly and freely, almost guilelessly, which is extraordinary given that Stefani has been in the public gaze for more than 20 years. Especially when you consider what she has faced personally over the past 18 months: a traumatic split—beset by cheating allegations—from her husband of 13 years, Gavin Rossdale; a new album, This Is What the Truth Feels Like; her first number one as a solo artist; and an unexpected romance with fellow Voice judge Blake Shelton. Stefani and Shelton, having performed the emotional duet "Go Ahead and Break My Heart" two nights earlier on the show ("We're number one on the country charts!" she trills delightedly) are the equivalent of America's prom king and queen. The national mood: You'd have to have a heart made of coal not to root for them.
"It's like, what's there to hide?" Stefani says, sitting in a trailer outside the Los Angeles County Museum of Art after her Bazaar cover shoot. She has changed back into combat-style trousers and a T-shirt, filled with fashion-y holes, that reads, EVERYONE LOVES AN ITALIAN GIRL. Fearsome red studded Christian Louboutin stiletto boots—her casual arrival footwear—lie kicked over in a corner of the makeup room.
While Stefani, 46, is an open book, she will at times cut out some pages. "It's because I have children," she says, referring to her three boys with Rossdale: Kingston, 10, Zuma, seven, and Apollo, two. "As a famous person, you start to think, 'I can't say all that because I'll embarrass them or hurt them in some way.' And especially now because they can see everything and hear everything." She adds with some pride, "But I've done nothing I'm ashamed of…" before breaking into laughter. "Well, we all have a few things we're ashamed of."
Celebrity profilers, and pundits, often employ the phrase "X has never been/looked/seemed better." But in Stefani's case, the odds are stacked in her favor. There is a palpable ease to her as she neatly launches into her life story as a prologue for her current chapter. "I've had such a weird extreme life line," she starts off, poking at a cookie. "Amazing parents, they're having their 50th wedding anniversary. I'm the second kid. My older brother, Eric, was the creative one; he was my best friend. We started a band together [No Doubt, which he and Stefani formed in 1986, when she was still in high school]. We never meant to make it. Like, we just wanted to play shows, you know? And then I fall in love with this 16-year-old guy, Tony [Kanal], who ends up being our bass player, and we do everything together—and then he breaks up with me." Their split fueled the band's breakthrough album, 1995's Tragic Kingdom (Eric Stefani left the group before its release). By this time she was on her way to stardom. But, she says, taking a breath, "I was like, 'What am I doing? This is, like, seven years of my life.'" Soon after, though, the band went on tour, and Stefani met Rossdale, the handsome British lead singer of the band Bush. "Then the next chapter: I meet Gavin, right? And that was it." The two were married in London in 2002. (Stefani wore a dip-dyed white-and-pink wedding gown by John Galliano for Dior, which now sits in the Victoria and Albert Museum's permanent collection.) "[My personal life] was my boyfriend and then my husband."
Stefani, for all her years of cool, her Comme des Garçons, her Harajuku Lovers, and her L.A.M.B., is a traditional, uncomplicated girl. "I've never been the type of person who thought I would have any impact on anyone. I just didn't even have those kind of dreams, you know?" But the dreams happened—No Doubt was huge, selling more than 13 million albums—and its sassy blonde frontwoman was fast becoming a pop and fashion icon. Also one who started to write music, beginning with 1995's "Just a Girl," which, many years later, would turn out to be her prescription for emotional wellness after the destruction of her marriage.
Stefani's next big evolution—following the hiatus of No Doubt and the launch of her lauded B-A-N-A-N-A-S solo career—was the birth of Apollo in 2014, when she was 44, 11 years into her marriage. "Yep, it was a surprise," she says, "but it was also the beginning of a waking up, like, 'Oh, my God, that's beyond this world.' He was kind of another beginning. And literally as soon as he was born, they called me about The Voice."
Apollo, now barely two, was "only 11 months old when everything happened," Stefani explains. "Everything" has now been well told: Stefani's discovery in February 2015 of Rossdale's alleged infidelity with the children's nanny. "Everybody knows what happened next," she says. Stefani performed at the Grammys, and her world came crashing down the next day. "February 9," she adds wryly. "I obviously know the date."
She continues in the matter-of-fact way someone might when her private life has been digested publicly. "It was the beginning of hell. Like six, seven, eight months of torture, trying to figure out this big secret." Stefani, in her open-book manner, wanted to "tell everybody," but kept mostly quiet for the sake of her children. She went back to work on The Voice; holed up with her friend of 20 years, the video director Sophie Muller ("She helped me through the whole thing"); and then, around June, started writing songs again.
When one has been so knocked down, not just in the most visceral, personal way but also in public, what do you do? In Stefani's case, "what happened was praying," she says. "That's my childhood, that's how I was raised. And I think I strayed from that. But you know when it gets that bad, you just get desperate? You're on your knees. You're like, 'What do I do?' You can't even go to your parents and ask them what to do."
She focused on her boys, who she now, painfully, sees only part-time due to her custody arrangement with Rossdale. "It was so insane because not only did my family break up, but then my kids are taken away like half the time, so that was really like, 'What?! What did I do?'
My dreams were shattered," Stefani continues. "All I wanted my whole life was to have babies, be married, like what my parents have. Then I remember thinking, 'There's gotta be a reason for this.' Of course you go through the 'Why me?' and feel sorry for yourself. But then I was like, 'No, this happened to me already and I made something good out of it,' and that was Tragic Kingdom."
So Stefani went back into the studio—with new collaborators—and slowly recorded This Is What the Truth Feels Like, wearing the same black holey T-shirt every day. "I had spent a lot of years not being confident about my songwriting. But I know that's all I had left, and that was my gift. I had read somewhere if you don't have gratitude and confidence in what you've been given, you're nowhere." She wrote the confessional "Used to Love You" only a few weeks before the single came out last October. Ironically, the album inspired by the end of her marriage became Stefani's first number-one solo hit.
Meanwhile, back on set of The Voice with fellow judges Shelton, Adam Levine, and Pharrell Williams ("July 7," says Stefani, who clearly has a great memory for seminal dates), "There I was with my big secret, right? And that's when Blake was like, 'Everybody, before we go out there, I want to let everyone know that by the time this airs, I will be divorced.'" Not only was Stefani shocked, she also felt "exposed somehow, you know? But it was like being handed this gift of a friend who was going through the exact same thing at the exact same time."
As we know, the rest is history. "And then it was just like everything flipped," she says. "It went from horrible to, like, hopeful and, like, 'Wow, God, you just don't know what's gonna happen next.'" She stops herself, pivoting back to beautiful music. "I'm not here to talk about my personal life, but my record is my personal life, so!"
So the bulletproof blonde is going to skate onward. "I'm at a certain time in my life where I feel like I'm doing what I'm supposed to do. Every day is art, you know? Some days are really bad, and some days are so good."
And as for Stefani and Shelton, the king and queen of the prom, "it's crazy the support and love I've felt. Life is such a weird…" She lets out a little laugh. "I mean, I can't believe I'm number one on a country chart."
The List
Our cover star's style picks
1 "My style is pretty consistent. I love anything that is feminine and masculine at the same time."
Dsquared2 sweater. 212-966-3487.
2 "One of my fantasies is to have flowers delivered to my house once a week. I do have a garden that I just planted full of zinnias."
3 "My favorite designers are Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garçons, Junya Watanabe, Vivienne Westwood, and John Galliano."
4 "I love Harajuku Lovers fragrances and Urban Decay eye primer."
Harajuku Lovers Pop Electric Music, $40. harajukulovers.com. Urban Decay Eyeshadow Primer Potion, $20. urbandecay.com.
5 "I go to Comme des Garçons once or twice a year and buy things that I'll wear forever."
Comme des Garçons Play top, $155. 212-604-0013.
6 "Some of my all-time-favorite movies are The Sound of Music, the original Annie, Wuthering Heights, and every Alfred Hitchcock film."
7 "I designed my home with Kelly Wearstler, so there isn't one piece that I don't love."
Kelly Wearstler Lineage chair, $5,900. kellywearstler.com.
8 "I am a huge fan of Dsquared2. I wear a lot of their pieces."
Dsquared2 pants, $2,065
9 "My favorite glasses are the ones from my own lines—L.A.M.B. and gx!"
gx by Gwen Stefani eyeglass frames, $149. simplyeyeglasses.com.
10 "I actually prefer to design handbags myself. That way I get exactly what I want."
L.A.M.B. bag. Similar styles available at amazon.com.