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Nicole Richie reveals more about herself on Twitter than she does in a formal interview.

At 5:28 p.m. on April 20, she tweeted about heading off to Canada. From there, her followers learned about her flight delay, her strategy for killing time ("I think I'm gonna prank call my mom"), her arrival in Toronto at 3 a.m., her day at Holt Renfrew's Bloor Street flagship and the "sausage & egg mcmuffin" that she told Miley Cyrus she ate at approximately 11 a.m. the next morning.

To be sure, Richie is beautiful in person: Her features are delicate, her gold-spun hair perfect and her haute boho style a far cry from the trucker hats she sported on The Simple Life, the reality show she starred in with Paris Hilton.

But despite girlish giggles and kittenish-meets-exhausted body language, she stuck close to her interview script.

The purpose of Richie's 48-hour Canadian blitz this week was twofold: to promote the launch of her jewellery line House of Harlow 1960 at Holt Renfrew and to visit Majestic Mills, the Montreal company that will be manufacturing her forthcoming collection of clothing, shoes and accessories.

Available at famed L.A. boutique Kitson since January, the first 35 jewellery pieces are a hodgepodge of vintage-inspired finds. Plated bangles boast Aztec-like prints while chunky riveted cuffs with leather inlays veer more towards gladiator. Some rings are made to be stacked while others look like extra-large mood rings. A gold headdress has already proven especially popular, Richie said in one of Holt Renfrew's private shopping suites.

"I have a pretty eclectic collection and just went through and picked out the pieces that were really inspiring to me and based the line around that," said Richie, dressed in a vintage black and gold tunic and curled up in her chair.

House of Harlow 1960 is frugalista-friendly: rings in the $45 range, bracelets for $65 and only a few pieces exceeding $100.

"I don't really wear diamonds and pearls and things like that, so it wouldn't make sense for me to design jewellery in that price point," she said.

Whatever you do, though, do not call the items C-H-E-A-P. Her partner, celebrity jeweller Pascal Mouawad, never presented her with anything that she thought looked, shall we say, inferior, she said.

Richie also noted that her Montreal stopover represents the official start of her collaboration with Majestic Mills. Look for the first stage of her ever-expanding fashion brand to arrive in stores by 2010.

"It's really important to me to make clothes for the clothing and not just because I made them," she said, trying to distance herself from the celebrity fashion-designer stereotype.

If nothing more, she has become one of young Hollywood's most influential style setters. (Face-eater sunglasses, anyone?) And although Richie is a former disciple of stylist Rachel Zoe, she credited her transformation to maturity. "It's all a part of growing up," said the 27-year-old. "I'll even look at myself in pictures from a year ago and I'll be totally humiliated."

With her second baby due in August (the father of her 15-month-old daughter Harlow is Good Charlotte rocker Joel Madden), she insisted there's no secret to maternity chic. "I generally wear big clothes anyway," she said. "When the time comes, I'll switch from jeans to leggings."

Richie goes out of her way to project a simple-life sensibility. She wears essential oils instead of a designer fragrance and suggested that plain white tees paired with different jewellery is her antidote to over-shopping. Incidentally, she said, she only gilds up at night, "kind of like putting on makeup."

Still, Richie does not subscribe to the Coco Chanel school of taking off the last accessory that went on. Is there such a thing as too much jewellery? "No, no there's not," she said with a giggle.