We Talk to Gwen Stefani About Her (Very Intense) Love of Makeup

In the middle of a large but nearly empty New York City penthouse, Gwen Stefani is buzzing with excitement. Like most celebrities, she commands attention, especially with her trademark platinum hair and raspy voice, but she is on another level. She talks a mile a minute and never stops smiling from ear to ear. She happily shares a video she just received from her dad of her youngest son, Apollo, refusing to share something with his cousins.

Stefani is here to discuss her new role as Revlon’s global brand ambassador and the face of its Choose Love campaign. “Revlon was really smart to choose me, because I truly, honestly, genuinely love makeup,” she says with confidence. “I could talk about it all day. I’m not joking. It’s serious to me.” Her high ponytail is slicked back, revealing heavily filled-in brows, lined and glossed nude lips, dramatic graphic eyeliner topped with smoky eyeshadow and loads of false lashes. “I’d do [a full face of makeup] even if no one was looking at me,” she says. “I did do it before anyone was looking at me.”

And love is legit on for Stefani these days. “It’s parallel with my life and my experience over the past couple of years,” she says of the campaign slogan, alluding to her current partner, Blake Shelton. “I was scraping myself off the floor thinking ‘What am I going to do with this mess?'" she says, referring to her divorce from Gavin Rossdale, to whom she was married for almost 13 years. “You have to make a choice to turn your life around. And I really did that.”