(2 of 9)
A blend of freshness and classicism is the prescription then, with a jolt of celebrity chemistry and maybe some dark hair for a change. And where will the new decade find this miraculous mixture? It is unsettling to realize, but it is true beyond doubt, that the most striking face in the modeling business as the '80s take hold is that of a 15-year veteran of the game who is exactly 15 years old. Brooke Shields (see accompanying story) has been on the cover of Vogue three times in the past year, shrieking with chic. Brooke Shields, coltish and flustered but so beautiful that strong men forget to flick their cigar ash, is on the runway of Rome introducing Valentino's spring collection. Brooke on TV implies in those naughty ads for Calvin Klein jeans ("Wanna know what comes between me and my Calvins? Nothing") that she does not wear underpants. According to Casablancas, the Manhattan-born Spanish-Frenchman who had the impudence nearly four years ago to challenge the home-grown agencies by opening a New York edition of his Paris-based firm, Brooke embodies "the perfect synthesis of everything that will be successful in the '80s: a little bit of sex and a little bit of innocence; a lot of talent and intelligence but a little cloud of scandal around it; a lot of distinction and yet the warmth of youth."
Though still a sophomore in high school, she has just made her eighth movie, Franco Zeffirelli's Endless Love, due out this summer. No one doubts that it was her 1978 film, Louis Malle's haunting Pretty Baby, in which she played a twelve-year-old prostitute, that inspired whatever campy fad exists for very young models. Students of the ridiculous have noticed a trend, or at least a good, hard try at a trend, toward gunking half-sprouted twelve-and 13-year-olds with alarming quantities of makeup and pinning them into getups suitable for jaded jet-setters. The microboppers rigged out in their mothers' clothes have caused a few yelps on the fashion scene, but they certainly have not taken over the industry. (In fact, they may be less significant than the flowering of over-40 models, now in greater demand as America's older population burgeons.) Brooke Shields is quite another matter, says Eileen Ford. "She is a professional child and unique. She looks like an adult and thinks like one." But as for the other dressed-up children, Ford declares: "There is no such phenomenon. Brooke is the phenomenon."