Inside Nicole Richie and Joel Madden’s Private World as Parents of Teenagers Harlow and Sparrow

“My mom let me go through her closet,” Nicole told E! News in 2016, “and she didn’t treat her clothes like they were precious, so I do the same thing with her. There are times when she grabs something and I’m like [eek]…’Okay!’ And then I sneak five minutes later and take it back.” (And sometimes the borrowing ran both ways, as when Nicole stepped out in her daughter’s on-point faux-furry pink jacket in 2014.)

And when she did a collab with Urban Decay in 2018, Nicole said her then 10-year-old also enjoyed experimenting with makeup. Maybe even more than her mom did.

Harlow’s “a different beast than me,” Nicole told People. “She should have this campaign. She is like a glitter, a liner, a liquid liner, a blush, a lipstick, a YouTube tutorial video. She is in it.” 

In recent years, Nicole has said on multiple occasions that, with Harlow still shopping in her closet, she’s taken to marking an “N” on all of her own stuff with a Sharpie to distinguish what’s hers.