Mail on Sunday (Sept. 7th 2007)

Gwen Stefani struggles with motherhood and career

Gwen Stefani is a woman of many talents – singer, songwriter, fashion designer, actress and now creator of her own signature scent. But with a 15-month-old son, too, it can be hard to hold it all together

Gwen Stefani makes her entrance into Soho House in New York on a wave of "frangipani blossom, peach skin and sensual musk".

She is here, amid much brouhaha, to launch her signature scent L – named after her clothing label and her breakthrough 2004 solo album, both Love Angel Music Baby (LAMB).

Walking into the marquee that has been erected over a rooftop pool in which two synchronised swimmers are performing to "The Sweet Escape" (from her second solo album of the same name), the singer and designer embarks on a mass meet-and-greet session with the American press that involves much squealing and smiling (from them and her).

Wearing a black off-the-shoulder jumpsuit and high, high heels, she works the room with her customary enthusiasm, happily chatting about the evolution of a perfume that, she says, is a "condensed version of me".

It is only later, when we sit down after the official launch for an exclusive one-to-one talk, that she gives any indication of how difficult it actually is to hold together all the different facets that make up Gwen Stefani.

The singer, writer, designer, mother and occasional actress (she played Jean Harlow in Martin Scorsese's Oscar-winning film The Aviator) is launching her fragrance in the midst of a gruelling international Sweet Escape tour, which started in April and will end in Budapest on 19 October (she is in the UK from 20 to 31 September), and, however determinedly she is smiling, she must be exhausted.

Indeed, the mention of the name "Kingston", her 15-month-old son by her British husband and fellow musician Gavin Rossdale, prompts a quivering of scarlet lips and a momentary slip of the heavy mask of make-up that she wears.

"Oh, please don't go there. It's the first time I have left him and I am very emotional," she says, pulling a plaintive expression that, in close-up, reveals deep shadows beneath her eyes.

"I think it's very hard for women to get the balance right.

"It's difficult and I struggle with it, but just when I think my plate is a little too full, Gavin comes to the rescue and the next thing you know, it all works out."

Gavin, whom she married in 2002, is looking after Kingston at home in Los Angeles (their main base, although they maintain a home in London's Primrose Hill and are "a little bit at home everywhere").

It would seem that nowadays the former rock god (his band Bush, which disbanded in 2002, had huge success in the US but limited exposure in Britain) is happier with a baby-sling strapped round his torso than he is with a guitar.

His career (he recently announced that he is recording a solo album) appears to be taking second, or maybe even third place to Gwen and Kingston.

"Kingston is super into his dad right now and I am a little, well…I am really happy for Gavin, but there is a part of me that is like, “What about me?” Kingston still doesn't sleep through the night, so his dad usually takes him for an hour or two in the morning so that I can sleep.

"And as soon as Gavin goes to brush his teeth, Kingston starts crying – it's hilarious," she says.

It is, Gwen says, her family that grounds her and prevents her, in the wake of her extraordinary ongoing success, from losing touch with reality.

Kingston is accompanying her on tour, and her conditions include (along with an impressive array of organic foods and herbal teas) a cot on the tour bus and a room at every venue with baby toys, a changing station and a rocking chair.

Family is clearly Gwen's bedrock (she is confident there will be more babies), but it is a subject that I have been warned not to raise – primarily because of the difficulties that have arisen from the shock discovery that Gavin's godchild, Daisy Lowe, the eldest child of rock chick Pearl Lowe, is actually his biological daughter.

Gwen has never spoken about the scandal and the couple are not believed to have had any contact with Daisy (now 18 and a successful model) since the DNA results were confirmed several years ago.

As engaging and friendly as Gwen is (she shows great interest in my own family and rushes to sign a copy of her album for my son), I do not dare to mention her stepdaughter, although I do ask why she isn't slowing down her career a little as she reaches her late 30s (she will be 38 in October, which is surely middle-aged for the youth-obsessed pop market she currently dominates).

Instead, with the new scent, the gruelling tour and an expansion of her clothing range, she seems to be pushing the boundaries of her career further and further.

Asked the simple question, "When are you going to slow down?", she is quick to reply that until the work "stops being fun" she will carry on moving forward.

Perpetuating the iconic image of the dazzling blonde is the least difficult part of her life. The dressing-up, making-up and constant reinvention come totally naturally to Gwen.

"I have been playing this same game my whole life.

"I love make-up, I love doing hair and I always played dollies and house. My dad made us children a wendy house and we would play mummies and daddies all the time. My whole life I have been “me”," she says, with a howl of laughter.

Gwen is so girlie that it might be irritating if it weren't for her self-awareness and self-deprecation.

She confesses that she is "so vain" and that she began dieting "when

I was in sixth grade [11 to 12 years old] – it's an ongoing battle and it's a nightmare".

And she recalls that during her high-school years, she was the ringleader of a group of girls that sound like something out of one of those Californian teen movies.

"I met my best friend recently – I hadn't seen her for a while and she has just had a baby – and we were remembering how we would go home from school and put on

her mum's make-up and spend the whole afternoon doing our hair and posing.

"I was the hair and make-up person for our whole group; I would burn everyone's ears with curling irons and I cut everyone's hair," she says, rolling her eyes at the memory.

Born and raised in Fullerton, California, she is the second of four children (she has one older brother and a younger brother and sister) of Dennis, a marketing executive of Italian-American extraction, and Patti, a stay-at-home mum.

The family was very musical – her parents loved Bob Dylan and folk music – and her father encouraged her singing and songwriting, but advised her not to take lessons because her voice was so unique.

After graduating from high school she enrolled at California State University,

but dropped out in 1986 to sing in her elder brother Eric's band, No Doubt (he played keyboards, but later left to become an animator on The Simpsons).

Gwen's first great love was fellow band-mate Tony Kanal (with whom she is still friends and who was the inspiration for her 2005 hit "Cool"), but in 1995 she became involved with Gavin Rossdale, then the hugely glamorous front man of Bush (they met when his tour manager suggested No Doubt open for Bush on tour).

Singing with a band in the early 90s, she says, toughened her up and played a part in the development of an image that is feminine but also very strong and challenging.

"I was the only girl in Orange County in a band. At the time, all the other bands were kind of punk rock, hard bands, and they would say all these terrible things to me like, “Go on, show us your t***.” So I developed this tough side, which was, “OK, you can look at me but don't touch,”" she says, running a hand through her hair (pulled into a tight chignon today).

The success of No Doubt – whose most memorable hit was 1995's "Don't

Speak" – propelled Gwen into the public consciousness, but it wasn't until she made her first solo album, Love Angel Music Baby, in 2004, that she achieved the iconic status she enjoys today, with a string of hits such as "What You Waiting For?" and "Hollaback Girl".

Along with her childhood love of playing with hair and make-up, Gwen also possesses a quirky, natural style that makes her a favourite with fashionistas (she is being tailed during the launch by a camera crew from American Vogue) and has made her clothing line a huge success with young women.

Ambitious and driven though she undoubtedly is, she is also nonetheless baffled

and bemused by the length ("it's been a very long 15 minutes of fame for me") and depth of her celebrity, and puts much of her success down to one thing: "magic".

"I have to believe in magic because look at my life.

"I mean, how did this happen to me? You know what I am saying? I am just a girl from Orange County, I truly am."

As our interview draws to a close, I ask her what is the single most beautiful smell in the world (we are, after all, meant to be talking about her perfume) and she instantly switches from the zany girl who believes in magic (but has worked relentlessly to make that magic happen) into a vulnerable mother who is missing her child.

"My baby. There are so many smells that come with a baby and I enjoy them all – even the stinky ones – because he is just so delicious. Oh my God, that morning baby breath when they wake up and yawn – I love that smell," she says, becoming visibly anxious and emotional as the subject hits on her small son again.

But not so anxious and emotional that she doesn't add – suddenly mindful that she should be promoting her own scent rather than her son's – a quick plug for the equally delicious L fragrance.

"I have been trying to find a way to describe why I am so excited by this smell. It's an extension of my personality and you can't force it on somebody – they are either going to like it or they are not. But I am loving it."