L.A.M.B.

CRAIG MCLEAN

BACKSTAGE at the MTV Europe Awards it’s a Roman orgy of decadence, pouting, preening and luxurious finery - which is apt because, following on from Edinburgh’s hosting of the previous event, the Italian capital is, for tonight, the centre of Planet Pop.

Simon Le Bon is enjoying a Jo Malone hand massage. His Duran Duran bandmate Nick Rhodes is carrying a football around, which he is getting as many celebs as possible to sign. A clump of moody bouncers indicates the proximity of Eminem. Franz Ferdinand nip off to see The Hives. Usher and Naomi Campbell swan through regally, going public with their relationship (they will split days later). Kylie Minogue wafts by, fairy-like. Natasha Bedingfield wears Alberta Ferretti, OutKast’s Andre 3000 wears Prince Charles-goes-Great Gatsby. Fashion designers Dolce and Gabbana coo as they watch the awards ceremony unfolding on a TV screen - just who is wearing what?

Then, a real explosion of out-there glamour: Gwen Stefani has entered the artists’ area. No made-for-the-occasion designer gowns for the No Doubt singer. Instead of consulting the finest Milan style gurus, she seems to have raided the world’s biggest dressing-up box. She has come as Alice in Wonderland, as played by Darcey Bussell - a pouty blonde bombshell with frilly skirt, killer heels and elaborate corsetry. Her posse, too, is out of the ordinary. Rather than a phalanx of minders, she is trailed by a troupe of diminutive, giggling Japanese girls. They’re dressed like dolly mixtures.

Japan, it transpires, is a big influence for Gwen Stefani. She found abstract inspiration for her debut solo album, Love Angel Music Baby, in the street culture of Tokyo. Both the album’s first single, ‘What You Waiting For?’, and the new one, ‘Rich Girl’, namecheck the individually attired youngsters who throng Tokyo’s pre-eminent shopping district. There’s also a song called ‘Harajuku Girls’ about them. The fashion label she launched last year, Lamb, is similarly inspired.

Stefani first visited Japan in the mid-1990s, as No Doubt toured the world in support of some of their 20 million album sales. She gushes that Harajuku was full of "crazy shit" and kids with "wicked style", who had "Japanesed" western style and made it "cool and cute and amazing". Stefani says, "They totally express themselves through the way they dress, and they’re making their own clothes and they’re doing their own thing - but yet there’s this whole western inspiration. So I was really fascinated by how we just keep this ping-pong match going.

"While I was nursing this new little baby Lamb company, I was also writing this record. So there was a lot of cross-pollination. I sing a lot about style and fashion, because I was getting into a lot of Japanese designers that were inspiring me for Lamb - [I was wondering] what do I want Lamb to be? So I sing about Comme des Garçons, Yoji Yamamoto and other labels such as Superlovers and Hysteric Glamour - these cute little lines that just have cuteness."

Another day, another country, another pit-stop on Gwen Stefani’s global promotional push. This morning she’s in London, being filmed in a hotel suite for CD:UK. She has been up since the crack of dawn, and is soon off to the Continent. There’s a lot going on in her life. She and her husband Gavin Rossdale, the lead singer with English rockers Bush, split their time between their homes in London and Los Angeles. Both have been finishing off albums in America (his is a side-project with a new band). Her fashion business is going great guns, and she recently designed the wedding dress for the new wife of No Doubt’s guitarist Tom Dumont. Her nascent acting career is on the up too - she doesn’t have to do much as Jean Harlow in Martin Scorsese’s The Aviator, but she certainly has significant big-screen presence. read more...