“She’s so sweet—my other cat is a tabby cat, too,” Nicole Richie tells me over Zoom as her gray tabby Lavender Bumblebee sits in her lap. Richie is sitting at her vanity, getting ready to meet up with one of her best friends. “I’m shooting this reunion special with Paris and talking to you first,” she says. “That’s my vibe right now.” She’s still in shock, she says, over being cast as the face of Estée Lauder’s new ”Night Night Club” campaign celebrating 40 years of skin science including the bestselling Advanced Night Repair and Revitalizing Supreme+ Night Power Bounce Creme and Advanced Night Repair Overnight Treatment.
After years of Y2K-era partying with bottle service as an OG influencer, the actress, designer, and entrepreneur has new interests. “I mean, just the whole campaign is a take on my current 2024 dream nighttime routine—if I could choose a dream club, it would be a club in my house with my Supreme Bounce Creme face moisturizer and my cats and going to bed early,” she says with a laugh, promising any 20-year-old readers that it is, in fact, a good time. Plus, going out is different in the age of social media. “Everything is filmed,” says Richie. “I don’t know that I would have that much fun. I do feel for them because they don’t have the luxury of just going out and doing whatever they want and no one knowing about it. Which is too bad. It’s too bad because guess what? It was the time.” Today, letting loose in public would be a bit more complicated. “Yeah,” she agrees. “It sucks.”
The shift in reality is part of what inspired all of this. “This campaign touches on how our nighttime priorities evolve over time, and Nicole Richie has a unique and relatable perspective to share with consumers,” says Estée Lauder’s executive director of consumer engagement in North America, Cyndi Pierre. “Nicole is witty,” she says, adding that she “embodies modern elegance.” And Richie is totally aligned. “I’m having just as much fun putting moisturizer on and watching TV with my cats as I did in the club.” Even when she was in that party zone, though, she was taking care of her skin. “I would never, ever fall asleep with my makeup on,” she says, “horrified” when I admit to skipping it (occasionally!) after a night out. “I need the night to be left in the night when I wake up—I want a fresh start.” It’s something she learned from a young age.
“My parents are Black southern parents, so the idea of not being moisturized is not an option,” Richie shares. “My mom was my first beauty muse because I would watch her in the height of the eighties going out every single night with my dad having an event or a concert. But she would get her makeup done, and then her nighttime routine was equally as big of a deal. She would take her makeup off and moisturize, and Estée Lauder is a brand sitting on her counter. I love that.”