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          She is tiny but alpha. She looks like she’s channelling both Audrey Hepburn and Victoria Beckham, both of whom she honours as style icons in her book Dannii: My Style.
The dress is from her own range Project D, a collection that manages to be on trend without being trendy, simple, womanly, marketable.
She looks in control at the Stella shoot– she always does – but soft, empathic. A quality which has been emphasised since having her baby Ethan just over a year ago with Kris Smith, rugby player turned model, who she met in a nightclub, Space, in Ibiza in 2008.
Dannii Minogue is a woman of constant reinvention. She’s had a lot of stereotypes to fight against. Firstly the misconception that she was Kylie’s younger, less famous sister. In fact as a child in Australia she was the star. A household name in the entertainment show Young Talent Time way before Kylie got so lucky and go Neighbours.
In previous incarnations Dannii was a little brittle, a little botoxed, a little harsh. She was never afforded the chance of showing her softer side until Simon Cowell put her on X Factor where she became the most successful judge – her acts won it twice.
Her best-selling autobiography My Story last year revealed how she felt being bullied at school and bullied by Sharon Osbourne on X Factor and bullied by the stuck-up Australian Prime Minister’s wife Sonia McMahon, the mother of her ex-husband Nipped Tuck actor Julian McMahon. (She married him aged 23 and they were divorced a couple of years later). It was honest, raw, emotional. It also discussed the loss of her best friend Laura to cancer and how the excruciating pain continued when her sister Kylie suffered from the same illness.
Dannii Minogue though has always been a survivor, and suddenly she was liked by the public as well. One of the biggest turning points was when she cut off her hair into a chic little bob. It made her at once stylish yet accessible, aspirational and open all at the same time.
In the style wars, if such things exist, between the X Factor judges, Dannii rocked. So much so that her publishers commissioned the second book about her style secrets. A glossy self-deprecating and fun read.
After being decreed most stylish and best judge by readers of Heat magazine, everyone including Minogue was shocked earlier this year when it was announced she would no longer be appearing on the show. Why would they do such a thing?
“I think Simon was concentrating on getting the American X Factor organised and by the time they came back to us with the dates – and the dates had changed twice – it would have meant me flying back and forth from Australia to the UK weekly for ten weeks in a row, which they were quite happy for me to do. But I said, ‘Have you ever done that flight? You do know where Australia is don’t you? And I have a baby, so family comes first.’
“I had already started shooting Australia’s Got Talent and our dates were locked in.” Her eyes widen and she lets. She looks right at you. There’s not a fleck of anger or disappointment. More relief.
“I actually think it’s worked out well. I’m in a happy place. I’m more relaxed because it’s a stressful job. I just saw Matt (Cardle, her protégé and last year’s winner) and it brings it all back.”
She’s nostalgic only for a moment. A fashion range, a new book to promote, and a baby are a hard enough juggling act.
She is sipping herbal tea post shoot. She tells me “one dress is the new power dressing Tabitha (Somerset Webb, her partner and co-founder of Project D) have decided.” Her shift to simplicity came with the chopping off of her hair. “Suddenly everything in your wardrobe looks different and you can’t imagine wearing it. My hair became sharp and I had to sharpen up my clothing. It was good timing. It happened before Ethan came along, but I would have had to simplify things anyway. That’s why the hair’s got even shorter, because I didn’t have time to do it.”
Minogue insists that both drastic hair changes came out of practicality. The bob because her hair was too damaged. The crop because the mid-length took too long to do. “Through necessity I needed it to be even more simplified to be a mum running around, but I like it.”
Hair and dramatic life changes and headset are inextricably linked. One only needs to look at her past hairstyles featured in her book. This hair is about loving fashion, creating what she says is the first fashion book specially created for the iPad, being a mum and liberating herself from X Factor.
Has she been in touch with her former X Factor co-judges and contestants? “A little bit, but once you finish the show it’s like the last day of school. It all builds up to that last day and then you don’t want to see anyone on that show for a while. You need a break from the face and from the whole thing. I go back to Australia where I’m in a different world and a different head space.”
During this trip to London she’s managed to catch some of it on TV. How weird was that? “It felt normal because I used to watch it before I was on it. I think it must be hard for Louis now that there isn’t any of us lot there.”
She and Louis Walsh got off to a bad start because he and Sharon Osbourne are best friends and Osbourne claimed that Minogue was the reason that she left the show. Minogue’s take on that has been detailed in her autobiography. It was a gruelling experience and Osbourne has never disputed it “because it was the truth. But it doesn’t matter. I’m over that.”
And she grew close to Walsh. She definitely became softer. Becoming a mum must have made everything different. She nods, “big difference because work used to be this much” her arms outstretch depicting the most possible amount “and now it’s this much” she depicts a much smaller space, maybe 20 per cent.
“Ethan is yummy, edible, adorable. He does the cutest things.” She changes into a black dress with a nipped in waist and layers of diminutive pleats to attend a fashion show. “It’s not on trend. We just do pretty and classic.”
She pours her tiny feet into even tinier black patent Louboutins. “My feet are going to be crippled by the end of the night, but it’s a fashion show. You’ve got to pull out the big guns. Did you read the chapter in my book where I say I’ve come down off my heels? Apart from flip flops I didn’t own any flat shoes. Kris came with me to buy some. I’ve never been a mum before but I had to do so much running around…
“Kris said you’re making it complicated and it’s not complicated. So when we were in Miami he helped me choose some sneakers. My feet are so small they were kids ones on sale for $20. Kris loves shopping. I don’t love it. Even supermarket shopping he loves. I don’t mind running to get something, but browsing I can’t do.”
There were some rumours a while back that you and Kris were not getting on? “Yes, that was a hard time for me. I was physically unwell, my thyroid stopped working and I had appendicitis. I ended up in hospital the last trip I was here and had my appendix out. Tabs came to nurse me.
“Leading up to that I was getting thinner and thinner and stressing because I didn’t know what it was. If you feel unwell it takes its toll on everything. Normally you can put on weight if you have an under working thyroid. But there is a percentage of people that have it reversed. It was very hard to concentrate, you can’t sleep, and I got very weak. They explain it to you as running a car without petrol.
“I was finding it hard to pick Ethan up and I was thinking I’m a new mum, I know I’m tired but surely it can’t be this hard. But you don’t know if you have a baby you think it must be normal tiredness as you’re taking on board being up at night and learning how to be a mum. But it got to the point where I thought this cannot be normal. Poor Kris. He was thinking after getting through the pregnancy and the baby that everything would be just fine and he couldn’t work out why I wasn’t well. It was bloody difficult.”
She had just got out of hospital and just found out that her thyroid wasn’t working when X Factor asked her to travel back and forth to Australia every week. “I’d just had my appendix out so it was an easy decision, I’m not well enough. It was quite shocking for the producers because they were used to me saying I’ll come here, go there, jump on any plane. I love the show and I probably wouldn’t have been able to make the decision to stop otherwise, but it just had to happen and it was the right time because I need all my strength to be a mummy.”Does she want to be a mummy again? “Maybe,” she says falteringly in a way that seems to mean she’d really like to. “Yes, but honestly until I get my health back on track it’s not a possibility. They went back into the caesarean scar, so it’s a year before you an even think of getting pregnant. Meanwhile I turn 40 next month (October 20)… I see babies and I think yummy. Tabs’s baby will arrive in November, so that will be great.”
She looks amazingly well and vibrant, but she always did deal with a crisis by putting on a smile. It’s in the Minogue genes. “I feel not sick. I’m not vibrantly jumping out of my skin. I feel like I’m on a curve upwards and it takes time. My body’s been through a lot in the last two years. The workload alone would make anyone feel tired. The jet lag. The X Factor. The baby. The being sick. But I’m getting there. I can’t wait till I’ve got the energy to work out.”
She’s a big fan of yoga and power plate, but you’re not advised to do a power plate after a caesarean. “I’ve done absolutely nothing. People get angry with me because I’m thinner than before I had a baby and I’m eating cup cakes. I started eating them when I was pregnant. I have to say I also make the world’s best carrot cake.”
I heard that she had recorded an album. “Oh, I recorded some songs, but that was a while ago. I’m not signed to any label.” She looks as if recording an album is absolutely the furthest from her mind. Becoming a mum has changed her profoundly from a woman who was always driven and worked hard since being a child and didn’t stop.
“When you have a baby everything kicks in. But the baby is a priority. I loved all of it. The being pregnant. I’m so jealous I keep rubbing Tabs’s tummy. I loved feeding him. Everything. I’m definitely less focused on work things and I enjoy them in a different way because when you leave your baby you go to work and you enjoy it for what it is. Being a full-time mum is definitely the hardest job and I’ve got it easy. I’ve got a great little baby.”
How did it change her relationship with Kris? “We have a bond that’s incredible. When you’re pregnant and the little person is taken from you you feel that separation. Maybe that’s what your body is meant to feel so that you want to have another one. But I think something similar happens for the guys. They’ve got this beautiful thing and they get used to a whole new set-up. I think he’d have a football team. Everything seems easy to him. I had to learn all of it because I hadn’t been around a little baby. People are saying are you missing the X Factor and I’m honestly, no. I loved it but I’m happy where I am. It excites me that I’ve got a balance in my life. Before that it was all work stuff and that’s a very dangerous place to be because if that work suddenly is not there or doesn’t excite you any more then you’re left with an empty bubble.
“Kris and I look at our schedules to make it work. He really likes being in Australia and it’s really good for both of us being there and good for Ethan.”
What does she most look forward to? “The next chapter. Being well.” Of all people Minogue knows what it’s like being undone by illness. “I’ve had so many amazing things that I feel lucky about but being well and enjoying it, that’s the most important.”

Dannii: My Style is published by Simon & Schuster at £19.99. The new Project D winter collection is in stores nationwide.