Gwen Stefani on her trademark 'look and sons’

Gwen Stefani admits it: It’s not easy to look like her. “The makeup goes on every day,” she confesses in the November issue of InStyle. “Even if I’m not going anywhere.” The Old Hollywood look is inspired by a mix of muses including Lucille Ball and Marilyn Monroe ,“I do my roots as often as [she] did hers”, as well as figuring out what worked at an early age. “When I was 17, my grandmother got me a gift pack with all these different colored lipsticks, and one of them was burgundy,” she tells the mag. “I tried it on and looked in the rear-view mirror and said, ‘That looks good.’ I’ve worn it ever since.” Being married to a rock star is an added incentive; she often dresses to impress hubby Gavin Rossdale. “It was like my own runway. I thought, ‘You are being such an idiot!’” she admits of trying on five outfits before leaving the house for a date. Apparently, Rossdale is a hard act to follow: “He looks good in everything.” Perhaps Stefani’s creative indecisiveness has trickled down to her two sons, who are fashion plates in their own right. “I like them to be creative and have fun,” she says of 5-year-old Kingston and 3-year-old Zuma. “Sometimes they’ll get dressed and it’s horrifying. But they often come out in outfits that are awesome.”