Two decades ago, when No Doubt's Tragic Kingdom ruled the airwaves, the world couldn't get enough of Gwen Stefani and her ska-punk sartorial leanings. Stefani certainly isn't one of those "where are they now?" '90s talents who's disappeared from the public eye. Quite the contrary. These days, you can slick on Gwen-vetted lipsticks from her recently launched Urban Decay line; catch her weekly on The Voice; listen to her new album soon, since it's due out this year, and, if you so choose, follow the seemingly endless chatter about her relationship with Blake Shelton, and if she'll be having more kids.
Now, you can also rock specs from Stefani's duo of eyewear collections for her L.A.M.B. and GX by Gwen Stefani lines, which launched this week and are priced at $149 to $275. Her foray into frame design makes sense for the star, whose collection of sunglasses and eyeglasses is in the ballpark of 250 pairs. "It’s really something I’ve wanted to do forever, and now it’s happening," she told Refinery29. "I needed to be [working] with the right people to get the quality I wanted, who didn’t say no to what I wanted to do.”
The timing is particularly right for Stefani to finally dabble in eyewear — she just started needing to wear prescription glasses for the first time. “If you saw how big the text is on my phone nowadays; it is so big, you could read it across the room! It's embarrassing," she says.
She's already outfitted eight styles from her new line with the proper Rx, and hasn't lost any of them, yet (but that's a very real concern). "When I tour, things get lost, and it's really devastating. I get really nostalgic about things." Lately, there's a particular T-shirt that's proven especially sentimental: She says it's just a random, "nothing" Urban Outfitters purchase "with holes in it," but Stefani wore it every day while writing her upcoming album. "I would be so sad if something happened to that shirt."
Stefani also reminisced about her '90s classic ensemble: "a white wifebeater with my name across it, in case you forgot who I was, a pair of punker pants with zippers, and Doc Martens." She hasn't completely retired that aesthetic: Stefani says her looks from her No Doubt tour last summer were "an evolution" of her fashion hallmarks of the mid-'90s.
But there's a certain style that reigned supreme 20 years ago that's made a robust comeback, but not for Stefani. "I love a crop top," she muses of a throwback staple she mastered back then, but you won't find her wearing them much these days. "I don't want to embarrass my kids!" she says. (Because killing it in a crop top is somehow embarrassing?) Besides, who says crop tops and cool frames can't mix?
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