Nicole Richie’s fashion range, House of Harlow 1960, debuts at Dubai Shopping Festival’s Celebrity Pop-Up shop on January 20, with the pint-sized designer/TV star due to follow just over a week later to help her fans style her ’60s-influenced pieces.
Richie — who rose to fame in the reality show The Simple Life but has since found a niche for herself as a designer, fashion plate and hilarious web video star — arrives in Dubai on January 29 and will host two public styling sessions, on January 30 and 31.
“I’m going to be doing this live styling session and talking about different ways to wear House of Harlow,” Richie told tabloid! over the phone from her Los Angeles home recently. “Listen, I will definitely give my opinion and say the ways I would wear it, but I love to see how other people wear my stuff too. We all get inspired by each other and my customers inspire me as much as I inspire them. It’s going to be exciting for me to hit this new part of the world with a completely different culture and mindset and see how they feel naturally obligated wear the pieces. I think I’ll probably end up just encouraging people to be 100 per cent themselves and wear it exactly the way they want to wear it.”
The pop-up shop at The Beach, opposite JBR in Dubai Marina, will carry a selection of clothing, jewellery, handbags, sunglasses and footwear from her range, which she started in 2007, until February 1. Prices for jewellery range from Dh75-600.
The spirit of the collection is the fashion freedom of the 1960s and 70s: “There were no rules, there were no trends, people were just wearing and doing whatever they wanted; it was just this kind of free time,” Richie says. “That’s the most fun thing about fashion, for me, and that’s how I use fashion, as a form of expression.”
Although she’s found success with the collection — she calls it her day job — Richie’s more recently taken on another role — web video star. Her Candidly Nicole videos reveal a side of one-time socialite, now mum of two that you may not have been aware of: She’s pretty funny, and self-deprecating to boot. Check out a recent one in which she tries to write a book with BJ Novak, or attempts to save the bees by putting hives in her dad Lionel Richie’s back garden. “I am having so much fun,” she says.
