I recently came across No Doubt’s ‘Don’t Speak’ video while browsing on YouTube, a video I hadn’t watched in well over a decade. But it instantly brought back memories of my teenage self glancing admiringly at Gwen Stefani. I loved watching this video (although I never actually liked the song) for exactly three reasons:

1) Her finger waves. Until that point I hadn’t seen a modern person wear a vintage hairstyle. It didn’t even occur to me that you could mix old styles with modern clothes (doh, yeah I know, I did grow up in the middle of nowhere). It quite radically changed my idea of style and prompted various trips to the local library – this was pre-internet -to research vintage hair and make-up.

2) Her Forties-inspired tea dress. God did I love that dress. It was perfectly 90s grunge but had all the trimmings of a vintage number – the cut, the buttons, the print. It started a continuous obsession with dresses and well, dresses with buttons.

3) Her red lipstick. Gwen  – and Courtney Love to be fair – singlehandedly demonstrated that red lipstick wasn’t just old lady territory or a terrible remnant of the 80s. It was cool. I’ve worn it ever since.