RAISED on a council estate, she became a symbol of girl power decked out in a dazzling Union Jack dress.
But Ginger Spice Geri Horner shows life is now all white as she approaches her 50th birthday next month.
Happily married to F1 Red Bull boss Christian Horner, the mum of two has put her wild past behind her in favour of a far more sophisticated existence.
The pair have amassed a reported £440million fortune — making her the wealthiest former Spice Girl — with a gilded life that would make even the Beckhams jealous.
And her chic lifestyle extends to her wardrobe — with the redhead wearing a “uniform” of white and neutral tones since turning her back on colour in 2019.
Geri, 49, said: “Every- thing becomes simple.
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“I like the colour, and it’s like wearing a school uniform as an adult. It matches everything and I don’t have to think in the mornings.
“It’s great for busy people, it kind of looks like you’ve made an effort when you haven’t.”
Sources close to Geri have suggested the look symbolises her longing for a “fresh start”.
It’s hardly surprising — as Geri (née Halliwell), from Watford, confessed that leaving the Spice Girls in 1997 was like a “divorce” and she felt lost at first.
She sold all the clothes she associated with the band and even flogged her prized red MG convertible.
The singer says she was comforted by her bestie George Michael, who sadly passed away aged 53 in 2016.
She even claimed she was once convinced she was going to marry him as her “gaydar” was so off.
She said on her Rainbow Woman YouTube show: “When I left the Spice Girls, I really felt that chapter was over and I knew I needed to let it go, which was sad.
“I wanted a restart, so I sold all of my Spice Girls clothes and this car, but I always had a bit of regret.
“When I was a little girl, in our first family photo, I’m holding a little red car. I always wanted a red car.
“Twenty years later, I got married to a nice guy and I told him how much I missed my car so, nice husband that I have, he surprised me for my birthday and bought my car back.”
Geri married Christian, 48, in 2015 in a lavish wedding at Woburn Abbey in Bedfordshire, with guests including TV’s Amanda Holden, Myleene Klass and former bandmate Emma Bunton.
The pair split their time between their two family homes in Banbury, Oxon and Hertfordshire.
It is Geri’s Oxfordshire home where she can be found most often.
She has donkeys, horses, goats and a duck pond that the family use for boating.
Last month she and Christian travelled to Glastonbury Festival by helicopter for an extravagant date to watch Paul McCartney.
But life wasn’t always so peaceful.
It was rumoured that fall-outs with bandmates Victoria Beckham, now 48, Emma Bunton, 46, Mel C, 48, and Mel B, 47 — who she had a fling with when she was younger — had led to Geri quitting the band.
And in private, Geri had fallen so low with the eating disorder bulimia that pop star Robbie Williams had to beg her to seek treatment.
She later launched a successful solo career, and topped the charts with It’s Raining Men in 2001.
But before then she was so short of suitors, she set her sights on pop star George Michael — until he introduced her to his then boyfriend Kenny Goss.
She told the RuPaul What’s The Tee podcast: “When I first left the Spice Girls it was like going through a divorce and I was a bit lost.
“I was always a big George fan. I thought I was going to marry him.
“My ‘gaydar’ was completely off.
“I tried to flirt with him and I was thinking, ‘Why’s it not working?’ Then he presented his boyfriend.”
She added: “You know in life when the poop hits the fan, you find out two things: What you’re made of and who your friends are.
“He scooped me up, I was a bit of a little lost kitten, and he tried to turn me into Grace Kelly.
“He took me to fancy shops and bought me Armani suits.
“He helped me streamline my hair and tone me down. He really supported me at a time in my life when I was lost.
“I’m forever grateful for that. He was a very kind man.”
The Spice Girls formed after each girl responded to an advert in Stage Magazine in 1994.
Bob and Chris Herbert, the father and son duo who ran Heart Management, wanted to create a girl group to compete with all the boybands popular at the time.
They soon realised they had hit gold by matching the five together.
But unfortunately the singers didn’t feel the same way about them.
The group’s debut 1996 single Wannabe reached No1 in 37 countries while their debut album, Spice, sold more than 23million copies worldwide the same year.
This made it the best-selling album by a female group in history.
The follow-up, Spiceworld, sold more than 14million copies worldwide in 1997.
Geri said of her glory days in the band: “There were moments that were incredible, like meeting Nelson Mandela was amazing.
“When you’re in a little bus together trying to make it, doing radio interviews, that was really funny.
“You’re tired, but it’s nice. Touring America was intense but amazing.
“I think the Spice Girls worked all over because it had a heartbeat that was a universal language.
“We kept to who we are, British, but we had that American optimism.
“We’d get all the girls together and would do this band hug and say, ‘OK we’ve got four and a half minutes to unite the world with one song and bring everybody together’.
“And that’s what our show is all about, bringing everybody together.
“I always say, the Spice Girls group doesn’t belong to five individuals, it belongs to eight billion people around the world, it’s all of us together.
“It’s those songs and memories and everybody has made us, so when we get up on that stage, it’s about everyone.”
Christian and Geri’s £440million fortune has been helped by the former Spice Girl making a million last year from her Ugenia Lavender children’s books.
Comparatively, her bandmate Victoria – mum-of-four — and husband David, 47, are said to have a net worth of £380million.
Now Geri is happiest with her animals and prefers bingeing on Peaky Blinders than painting the town . . . white.
But the Spice Girls are said to be reuniting as a five-piece for the first time in ten years — when they sing at Geri’s birthday party at her house on August 6.
One person who will be delighted will be her lookalike daughter.
On the same podcast, Bluhttps://www.thesun.co.uk/tvandshowbiz/18567029/geri-horner-instagram-daughter-bluebell-16-dad/ebell, whose little brother Montague was born in 2016, was asked if she likes her mum’s music.
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She said: “Yes I do, actually. When I was younger I used to be obsessed with it.
“I would listen to it all the time and I didn’t realise it was my mum. And then my mum was like, ‘That’s me.’”
GERI reveals that her mum, who raised her in Watford having moved there from Spain, didn’t want her to become famous.
She said: “My father tried to put me on stage when I was a little girl without telling her.
“But mum said, ‘I don’t want you to end up like Judy Garland, on drugs. You’re not doing it’.
“She stopped me, all because of Judy Garland.”
On the Spice Girls, she added: “It was an older man trying to put a girlband together.
“He didn’t name us, he didn’t do any of those things.
“He went away and we created our own thing. We named ourselves, created our songs, found our own identity.
“We learnt from an early age to be ourselves and have the courage to do that. It takes strength.
“But when you’re young, you also have that cocky bravado.
“I would say we used to dress and behave like we were famous before we actually were.
“We would walk to the front of the queue and be like, ‘Yeah?’
“When you are in a group, you can encourage each other and light each other’s fire to help that.”
