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But what you don’t get of Coleen from those paparazzi snaps is her voice. It sums her up: a warm Liverpool lilt, punctuated regularly with a throaty Scouse “erm,” that suggests a friendliness and also that she’s down to earth and utterly comfortable in her own skin. “I’ve always been very secure and confident in myself, even when I was a schoolgirl in Liverpool,” she says.
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These qualities have taken her a long way. The 20-year-old is forging a career away from her hot-headed footballer fiancé’s side. She writes a column for Closer magazine and has a book in the pipeline – but it’s in the fashion stakes that she’s really emerging as a force in her own right. With a Vogue photo shoot and a Marie Claire cover under her belt, her more colourful, much-publicised fashion mistakes have been replaced with a sleek, elegant look. To cement her rise into the fashion firmament, this autumn she’s the new face of the “Must Have” range by George at Asda.
It’s an inspired choice. Not only is Coleen best known for loving clothes (and shopping for them), but her aura of accessibility makes her perfect to advertise a range that does catwalk looks at supermarket prices. “It was our local supermarket. We all always did the weekly shop there and I had bought lots from George when I was a kid, so me mam’s made up.”
Although Coleen seems refreshingly normal, the whole PR engine surrounding her is not. After I arrive, I’m kept in a different room as the shoot takes place, so that I don’t put her off. When we do speak, hours later, her fierce, protective senior publicist sits in on the interview, rebutting any questions about Wayne or WAGs with a firm, “Not going there.”
What we are allowed to talk about is clothes. Fortunately this is one of Coleen’s favourite topics. She’s always loved fashion. “I’ve been interested in clothes as long as I can remember. My mum used to say I was very bossy as a little girl and had a very clear idea of what I wanted.” She’s the same now, preferring her own judgment to that of a stylist. “I couldn’t have someone tell me what to wear all the time, that wouldn’t do.” She trusts her own eye when it comes to her boyfriend as well. “If I see something in a shop that I like then I’ll pick it up for Wayne, but I never say, this is ‘in’, you’ve got to wear this.” In fact, Coleen insists that she isn’t a slave to the latest trends, even for herself. And although some of her looks have been more successful than others, she shrugs off past mistakes, “I’ve had a lot of criticism, but what 16-year-old does know what to wear? And to be honest, I’m not sure I want to develop a clear style of my own. I just like to try lots of things out, so I’m going to carry on doing that.”
Despite the experimentation, a consistent look does emerge: an unabashedly coiffed, label-heavy northern chic that she’s proud to admit to. “Girls in the North do dress very differently from those in the south. The style in Liverpool is just unbelievable. If you walk through the town centre on a Saturday afternoon you’ll see so many lovely girls. I’ve known people who come up from London and go out in their jeans and feel really out of place. We’ve got the ‘eye’ up North. No matter how little money you have, you can still look fabulous.” Lots of money can’t do any harm, of course – occasional comments make you realise that she really is shopping in a different league to the rest of us. When I ask her about trips abroad, she says that she enjoys shopping in different cities but that “Prada is the same everywhere”. And her favourite fashion moment may have been wearing a vintage dress to the National Television Awards, but it was the accessories that made it. “Chopard lent me nearly a million pounds of jewellery and I had a security guard with me for the whole night, so that made me feel that bit more special. The earrings weighed half a pound alone – I don’t know why they didn’t fly off, we were dancing around so much.”
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Coleen obviously adores glamour, but says, “I’m more of a girlie girl than a sexy girl.” She isn’t really one for make-up, eschewing even mascara in the day. And contrary to WAG lore, she never uses fake tan. “I’m just lucky to get a really good colour after a week in the sun.” Her only concession to the footballer’s wife stereotype is the long extensions that snake down her back, but even then, she admits to getting a bit of home help. “Wayne’s cousin is really good, she does my hair sometimes.” This no-nonsense approach extends to her body image as much as personal grooming.
Although she cites her fashion role models as the stick-insect clan of Nicole Richie, Lindsay Lohan and Mischa Barton, she is quite clear that all this size 00 malarkey isn’t for her. “That’s them. I don’t like to criticise anyone else, but everyone is different. The only person I’d ever listen to about those things is my mum.” She likes wearing leggings, but admits that “I have to wear the long ones, because the short ones really aren’t very flattering for my legs.” She started going to the gym about a year ago in an effort to shape up (she released an exercise DVD last year). “For me, it really isn’t about losing weight. I don’t think I’d ever do that. It’s much more about being toned, having energy and feeling healthy.”
Despite all this common sense, she admits to the pressures of being constantly scrutinised. “It’s hard for me and Wayne to go out for just a quiet lunch. We’re always being asked to sign something or have our pictures taken.” She pauses. “But I don’t focus on it. If you started worrying about it, you’d just get paranoid and insecure. I don’t want to live my life like that.” Somehow, I don’t think she ever will.