Although Coleen Rooney will soon be on our screens in I'm A Celeb wearing that trademark red fleece, over the years she has evolved into a fashion icon. So much so, that in 2023 the 38-year-old even posed for the cover of Vogue in her home city of Liverpool in an impossibly chic £3,300 Dior coat, with the iconic Royal Liver Building in the background.
Wind back 20 years and, just a few streets away, the then 16-year-old Coleen McLoughlin was being photographed trudging home in the rain wearing a big black puffer coat and ankle socks as she was introduced to the world as the girlfriend of Everton’s young star Wayne Rooney.
As he became one of the greatest players of his generation – a record goal scorer for Manchester United and England – Coleen transformed into a titan of the fashion world. The tagline on her Vogue cover reads “Wife, mother, detective, superstar” and many were quick to point out that the Dior coat is a nod to the beige trench coats much-loved by many fictional detectives. So the right look for “Wagatha Christie” Coleen, star of last summer’s libel trial.
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Vogue)Using her sleuthing skills, Coleen discovered that fellow WAG Rebekah Vardy, wife of Leicester forward Jamie, had been selling stories about her to the press. The court case, which she won, captured the nation’s imagination, but when all eyes were on Coleen many, including Vogue, noticed how much her fashion sense had evolved.
In the mid-Noughties, Coleen was often in the type of bright-coloured outfits you would expect a teen to be seen wearing, such as a lime green hat and T-shirt by US designer Von Dutch. She liked designer clobber, but also said: “I love TopShop, Gap and H&M.” At the 2006 World Cup, the phrase WAGs (wives and girlfriends) was coined. Coleen, Victoria Beckham, Alex Curran and pals were all lashing on the fake tan and pinning on cascading hair extensions.
But at the Grand National at Aintree in 2012, Coleen was chic and cheerful in a hot pink Roksanda Ilincic dress with Louboutin heels. In 2014, Coleen brought out her own swimwear line with Littlewoods and wore a modest geometric dress at the launch in London. Mum-of-four Coleen’s appearance in this month’s issue of Vogue was her second collaboration with the magazine.
In 2005, aged 18, she was given a Vogue makeover, wearing Stella McCartney, Gucci and YSL. She told the magazine: “I’m not the person the newspapers think I am. And I don’t understand that chav label.” Looking at her now, does anyone?
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