Happy Birthday, Nicole Richie! The Style Star Dishes On Ear Piercings and Technicolor Hair

Happy 33rd birthday, Nicole Richie! As creative director of House of Harlow 1960, mom of two, and star of the hilarious web reality series and VH1 show Candidly Nicole, Richie is talented in multiple ways. But she's probably best known for looking incredibly on-point on and off the red carpet, and for sparking style trends, two of which gained serious momentum this year—multiple piercings and pastel tresses.

Her ear piercings—she has nine total, five on one lobe and four on the other—are actually a birthday tradition. "I do one piercing a year for my birthday, although I just hit cartilage, and it was brutal," Richie previously revealed to InStyle . "I don't think I'm doing it again, like how high can I really go? That's it for me; the jig is up."

She may be done with piercings, but Richie's colorful strands are still gaining traction. After bleaching her hair twice (a process that Richie said took "forever") to dye it a pretty lavender hue, she switched things up three months later to debut a cerulean shade. "I was just ready for a change and I thought, once you bleach your hair, you might as well go through the colors," she stated matter-of-factly. "Because I'm going to be 33, when is this really going to happen again?"

We're on the lookout for her next technicolor choice, but in the meantime, let's honor her 33rd birthday with a look at her transformation, from when she was 11-years-old in 1992 to present day.