Interview: Pearl Lowe, fashion designer

Published on Thursday 26 August 2010 14:24

Pearl Lowe is on the guest list for the Libertines' secret comeback gig in London tonight. One of the most celebrated British bands of the noughties, musicians Pete Doherty and Carl Barat have reunited, and this evening they're playing an intimate, private gig for family and friends. It's one for the musical history books, but Lowe won't be attending.

• Pearl Lowe (right) with her daughter Daisy

"Ten years ago I'd have been in the front row," she says with a laugh.

"Moshing!" She adopts a faux-quaint tone with this last word, playing at being the uncool forty-something trying to get down with the kids.

Only Lowe, who makes no attempt to get down with, or indeed keep up with the kids any more, is about as cool as it gets. The 40-year-old mother of four is married to Britpop royalty (Supergrass drummer Danny Goffey) and rode the Britpop wave herself as the lead singer of Powder. Back in the 1990s her closest friends read like a Who's Who of Cool Britannia, from Jude Law and Sadie Frost to Kate Moss, Jonny Lee Miller, Liam Gallagher and Patsy Kensit.

Hers was a lifestyle envied by millions, but it almost destroyed her, as she descended into a spiral of drug and alcohol addiction. Today she has been clean for six years. She lives in a house, a very big house, in the country (rural Hampshire to be precise) with her family and goes to bed at 10pm, which is why she won't be making it to tonight's gig. She has two fashion ranges; a high end main line which utilises vintage lace sourced in the UK and a more affordable line for high-street chain Peacocks.

We meet in the busy tearoom of chic London department store, Liberty. She looks younger than her 40 years, fresh-faced in a vintage-inspired printed tea dress. Her short, choppy hair falls scruffily around a pretty, heart-shaped face from which stare out big Bambi-esque eyes. She wears stacks of silver rings on every finger, and her only vice appears to be the enormous slice of red velvet cake she's tucking into. She is all smiles and charm, and it's easy to imagine her as the life and soul of a group of friends.

I have been told by Lowe's people that this is to be a "fashion and style-related interview," and her agent sits in on our chat. The explicit implication is that she doesn't want to go over old addictions, old friendships, old scandals. And who can blame her?

It was an unpleasant period of her life, and not one she wants her children to have to read about for years to come. It's cruel to constantly remind an ex-addict of their former behaviour when they're making a go at forging a new, substance-free future, yet her old lifestyle was so notorious that it still defines her to some extent, at least in the eyes of the popular press.

Plus she's already put her side of the story in her 2007 autobiography All That Glitters: Living on the Dark Side of Rock 'n' Roll, which covered everything from snorting cocaine just after the birth of her son Alfie to smoking heroin after dropping off the kids at school to finding out that the father of her eldest daughter, model Daisy Lowe, was not her first husband as she had thought, but Bush front man (and Daisy's godfather) Gavin Rossdale. Rossdale, married to singer Gwen Stefani, initially struggled with the results of the test which were revealed in 2004.

But then who can blame the public for being just a little bit curious about what has undoubtedly been such a fascinating life? Who can blame us for wanting to know about what it's like to party with Kate Moss?

Or about putting up Moss's then boyfriend, the notoriously wild Pete Doherty and his bandmate Carl Barat when they needed a place to crash?

Or indeed about the unnamed famous friends mentioned in All That Glitters, who turned up on her doorstep at 6am looking for a fix of heroin?

Heeding the publicist's instructions, but looking for an in at the same time, I ask her a "fashion and style-related" question. Sadie Frost and Kate Moss have both created their own fashion lines. Have they ever offered her their advice on designing? She looks at me over her coffee cup, half weary and half trying not to laugh. "No," she says, before adding another "no" and a shake of the head for good measure.

Fair enough.

Of course while some of her old friends have dabbled in fashion, Lowe has made a stable career out of it. Her main line is made up of very beautiful, timeless pieces, inspired by a vintage aesthetic and utilising vintage fabrics, but made for a modern woman. Her Peacocks range is more fashion-driven and certainly more affordable, with pieces averaging around 15 to 30.

Also vintage-inspired, the 12-piece autumn collection which launches tomorrow is all nipped-in waists, Peter Pan collars and pretty prints, the kind of effortless pieces Daisy might be papped wearing in the VIP tent at a music festival. It's refreshingly suitable for most ages, sizes and budgets, but has a certain sophistication, quirkiness and simplicity that's missing from many high street collaborations.

"This was always a bit of a dream of mine because I'd done the high end stuff and a lot of people I knew couldn't afford to buy dresses in that price range, so to design a range within this budget, where all my friends could buy them, it's so nice," she says. "I used to get loads of e-mails from girls going 'I love your dresses but I can't afford them', but now I get ones saying 'I've got everything!' I've seen so many people in my dresses. It's such a buzz when you see somebody in your dress and they look really cool."

Twenty-one-year-old Daisy Lowe is now famous in her own right thanks to a string of fashion campaigns for everyone from Agent Provocateur to Burberry, work as a DJ and television presenter and high profile relationships with music producer Mark Ronson and, more recently, Matt Smith, aka Dr Who. The double of her mother, she stars in the campaign for Lowe's collection for Peacocks and has nabbed quite a few pieces for her own wardrobe, and the pair - who are extremely close - jumped at the chance to work together.

"Daisy does all my modelling because she's a taller, skinnier, more beautiful version of me, and she's who I design for really, her type of body," she says. "She's got a womanly shape and I do design dresses for people who have bigger shapes, I design dresses that I want to wear. I couldn't have asked for a better model really. There have been times when if I say 'Daisy, could you not wear it like that?' she'll say 'Well get another model then...' You know, cos I'm her mum and we have those mother-daughter bickers. But she doesn't mean it."

Does Daisy help out with the design process? "She always lifts up the hemline, and she'll lower the neckline," she says with a laugh. "I think we'd definitely like to collaborate more because we complement each other a lot and we like working with each other because it means we get to spend time together. We share clothes all the time. I stayed at hers the other night and I went into her wardrobe and I just found so many of my things in there. She doesn't ask!"

Lowe's personal style is quite classic, and vintage without being costume-y. She dresses for her petite, curvy frame and is regularly scolded by her daughter for not being adventurous enough in the wardrobe department. But then since her move to the country a few years ago, her own style has relaxed, and she tries to put the days of experimental white leather jackets behind her, even though friends keep insisting on posting the embarrassing pictorial evidence on Facebook.

"I'd look really ridiculous if I wore some some of those weird things in the country," she says with a giggle. "Even now I stick out a little bit with my friends there. When I lived in London you had to keep up with the Joneses, wear the latest thing or get the latest boots or shoes or whatever because you'd be photographed all the time, but I don't really go to those things any more, which is good because I don't really want to be like that any more."

Escaping to the country has been one of the best things she ever did.

Her London friends all wondered how she'd cope, and her husband has dropped hints about moving back to the city when the children are grown-up, but she's not having any of it, insisting she won't go further than Bath. She spends her days off relaxing with her family in the open air, walking the dogs and trawling auction houses and bric-a-brac shops for vintage finds. Does she ever miss her old lifestyle?

"If I missed it I'd be there doing it," she says firmly. "I'm much happier in the country. It just really suits me. I just think I was always a bit of a hippy chick really. I just like cooking, looking after my family, growing vegetables and being healthy really. I love being healthy! I love getting up in the morning and feeling amazing.

"It's a much more tranquil, beautiful life. I can't even compare it to what it was like before."

She is happier now than she has ever been, and looks younger and fresher today than in the paparazzi shots of her at the height of her fame in London. She sank into a depression on her 30th birthday, but when she turned 40 in April, saw the milestone as just a number. She is, she says, happier with the person she is today than when she was younger. Why is that?

"I got clean almost six years ago and I did a lot of soul searching and healing. That's basically it," she says, shrugging. "Not living in London really helps because I have the space to think and I'm actually using my creative talents so I'm quite content." She pauses before adding with a sigh: "And there's no bitching in the country. I felt like with London sometimes you have to join in on the bitch-fest. I feel it's quite negative sometimes, and I don't know if that's just the world that I lived in, but where I live now there's none of that.

"So you don't feel bad about yourself because you're not sitting there gossiping."

Lowe has cleansed herself not only of drugs and alcohol, but of the lifestyle which fuelled her addictions. Not only has she left London behind, but she has lost touch with most of the friends from her time on the party circuit. Most of her friends today only know details of her former life from what they read in the press, and it frustrates her that she's not being allowed to forget it.

"I've put that away," she says. "I believe that the past is dead and I never think about it because what's the point? For me it's about today and the future so I suppose I take a spiritual approach to being clean. I think of the circumstances of why I was the way I once was. I don't feel like an ex-addict. It doesn't even come into my life."

Lowe's two eldest children have read her book. She wants them to know about everything that's happened to her that's led to this point and, she says, she doesn't ever want them to go down the same road. Does she worry about that? "I don't worry about it because I know that they only have to look at what happened for me and they'll probably be put off for life," she says with a bitter-sweet laugh. "And certainly the two eldest, Daisy and Alfie are such grounded characters that I just know that they would never go there. I worry slightly about my two younger ones because they're quite nutty and both of them are quite..., I could see them pushing boundaries a little bit. But it doesn't worry me because I'm alright so they will be too, and they've got me and Danny to guide them."

What about her daughter's fame? It can't have been anticipated, and fame has been an uneasy bedfellow for Pearl. Is she concerned about Daisy having to deal with the ups and downs of life in the public eye at such a young age?

"Fame is a funny thing, because if you can use it to your advantage then it's brilliant," she says candidly. "Daisy doesn't read the press, she doesn't know when she's in the papers. It kind of goes right over her head. She's got it really sussed, but I think a lot of people don't because they really buy into it. Fame was never my driving force. There were times when I sought out money when our family were really in trouble and things like that. But I was never fame-driven. Which is good I think, because I know a hell of a lot of famous people and the ones who really let fame affect them are the ones who aren't alright. The ones who don't care about fame are alright. It's so simple."

Lowe has signed up for another year designing for Peacocks, and will continue to work on her main line. She harbours ambitions to open a little lifestyle shop in London selling bits and pieces of her favourite vintage finds, from fashion to furniture. "But all very rock 'n' roll," she assures me with a laugh, before adding: "But not naff rock 'n' roll. Classy rock 'n' roll." A bit like her, really.

Pearl Lowe's 12-piece autumn collection for Peacocks is available online and in stores from tomorrow. Visit www.peacocks.co.uk for details.

after years of excess, pearl lowe walked away from london and britpop, to find a new life in the country and a career as a fashion designer

This article was first published in The Scotsman on Saturday, 4 September, 2010