Gwen Stefani on Her DIY Fashion Days, and the Hand Her Kids Have in Her Current Style

“I’m like a kid in a candy store with glasses!” That’s Gwen Stefani on the development and resulting styles of the eyewear range of both L.A.M.B. and her nicely priced apparel and accessories line, GX by Gwen Stefani. The frames (both optical and sunglasses) are as bold as you would expect—and have the IRL Stefani stamp of approval: “I got a pair of glasses right before I got pregnant with Apollo,” she tells Vogue.com. “I was like, ‘I think I need glasses!’ Everybody in my family has them, and I just got lucky—and then all of a sudden it just hit me. I was so excited to get [glasses] and wear them, and then I just never did. After I had the baby, I don’t know what happened, but I was like, ‘Whoa, I need these,’ and that’s right when the samples came.” Stefani surely knows plenty about high-impact style from the shoulders down, too. We caught up with the singer to talk about her ska-inflected ’90s look, post-motherhood dressing clichés, and her (accidental) first designer buy.

Could you speak about the evolution of your style since your No Doubt days?

You know how you kind of can’t explain why you have passions for certain things? I just always was that girl who was into style and makeup. I can remember getting into high school and getting into music and that’s probably when it really started. My mom was quite fashionable, and she grew up in the ’60s, which was such an amazing time period for [style]. Then [I got] into ska music, which was a nod to the ’60s and ’70s. The bands I was into—it wasn’t a lot of girls, so I didn’t really know how to dress. I got really into thrift store shopping, really discovered Marilyn Monroe and James Dean and started watching every single old movie. It’s just so glamorous. That’s where it started for me.

I was so naive. I didn’t know anything about real fashion. Growing up in Orange County, I would look at magazines and I’d be, like, anti-magazine: “Oh, my God, you can’t get those clothes, they’re so expensive!” I would just be all about getting a pair of old men’s pajamas and pegging them, making my own stuff. I just wanted to dress different from everyone else, and I don’t know why. Once I got into the band, I was like, “Oh, what am I going to wear onstage?” The first dress I ever wore onstage was a remake of what Maria von Trapp wears in The Sound of Music when she goes to see the children for the first time and they go, “That’s the ugliest dress I’ve ever seen!” Me and my mom made this drop-waist tweed dress. From then on, I always made my clothes. Our first tour that I did, I think I made three dresses. Everything was primary colors, very Disneyland and animated-looking.

What was great about my success was being able to work with talented people who were more sophisticated and had more knowledge about fashion. The first fashion show I ever went to, I was 30 years old! [laughs] It was Vivienne Westwood in New York. That’s where I met my hairdresser, Danilo, and I met Vivienne that day. The first piece of designer fashion that I ever bought—I didn’t even know I was buying a Vivienne Westwood. It was for the “Spiderwebs” video, I had to find a top. I went shopping on Melrose. I knew I was going to wear punker pants—I didn’t know that Vivienne Westwood made those up! I just knew from Orange County that was cool. I went into [her] shop and they had all these beautiful corsets. They were like $800, and I was like, “Fuck that, I’m getting that shit, I don’t care! It’s my video!” It was this corset with a rose on the front. I didn’t even know who she was. I was just so naive and anti-fashion growing up in Orange County. Then later I got to work with people like Andrea Lieberman [designer of A.L.C.], who’s the stylist who ended up doing everything on Love. Angel. Music. Baby. We hit it off. She grew up in New York, and she went to art school and fashion school, and she traveled through Africa . . . We had so much in common, but not. She really taught me about fashion.

You’re obviously a major ’90s style icon—how do you feel about the runway revival of that decade in recent seasons? Are you nostalgic for the fashion of those days?

You know when you’re living in a time, you don’t look at it the same way? It doesn’t seem clear to me what the fashion was. I know that I was all over the place! I never had a stylist or a makeup artist or even an assistant. I had my makeup box and I had my suitcase. I was on tour for two and a half years, I never came home. I had a girl who would send me swatches out on the road. I would be like, “Okay, I want a pair of yellow punker pants.” We already had the pattern, so I would send [the swatch] back to her with instructions like, “I want this zipper here.” Then she would FedEx that shit to me on the road, without a fitting, and I would just wear it onstage and just hope that it worked out! So when I look back at what I wore, I see a lot of mess. That was just me making it up as I went. Nobody told me or helped me. It wasn’t until I met Andrea, doing the video “Let Me Blow Ya Mind”—that’s when I did Rock Steady, and that’s [the point in my career] when I start to be really proud. I don’t have any fashion regrets or anything like that, it’s just when I started to get older and more sophisticated . . . There’s some stuff me and Andrea did together that I can’t even believe how beautiful it was. I would come to her with an idea or a theme, and she would just take that to another place that was so creative. I want to cry when I think that I don’t work with her anymore, because she’s my favorite person ever.

When you find someone you connect with creatively, you can’t beat that. How, if at all, has motherhood changed your approach to fashion?

I don’t think it’s changed me at all. I see certain people out there who will have a baby and they almost try to make up for it. Like they’re embarrassed to be a mom, so they try to be sexier and nastier. That, to me, is such a cliché. You just evolve, especially when your kids get older. I’ll wear something, and my kid will be like, “No way! Your stomach is showing, go take that off!” Certain things just don’t work anymore, you don’t feel comfortable, or you did that already. But I still like the same stuff.

Do you have any eyewear style icons from history?

I just love vintage. When I look at Marilyn Monroe, those pictures that you see of her with black-framed glasses . . . I like nerd glasses, bigger glasses. And then when it comes to sunglasses, I kind of go all over the place. I love the idea of something masculine and feminine as well. It’s such a fun accessory to do, because you know that any body type, any personality—they can all get their hands on it. Doing a collection where you know that pencil skirt, only a couple of people will be able to pull that off, but this is, like, everybody.Read more at:evening dresses online | prom dress shops uk