For the first time, Brooke Shields has embarked on an endeavor that’s completely her own, she said.
“Up until now, most of everything that I’ve done has been through the lens of other people, designed to fill a space that other people wanted me to fill,” said the 56-year-old actress and model, who’s been in the limelight since her pre-teen years as the star of Louis Malle’s 1978 film “Pretty Baby.”
“Prior to this, it’s been on other people’s terms, whereas this is generated just by me from this place of necessity with regards to a message that I wanted to get out and what that means to me,” she continued.
The project is “Beginning Is Now,” an online platform and lifestyle brand founded and financed by Shields.
“I feel stronger, sexier, more capable, more confident now than I ever have,” she said of its initial inspiration. “And I want other women to feel that way as well, to give themselves the permission.”
She aims to inspire and unify women across generations.
“This comes from a desire of mine to energize women to embrace new beginnings, to really start to learn how to celebrate who you are and not be afraid to find the courage and find resilience and harness strength,” Shields explained.
“It can be as small as starting to exercise, and it can be as large as pivoting and quitting a job and starting a new endeavor of some kind. I want to build a community where we are energized by one another.”
That community has already been forming, fans and followers looking to engage with Shields on social media; she has 1.3 million on Instagram alone, where she’s often sharing glimpses of her life. Lately, she’s been teasing the unveiling of “Beginning Is Now,” which launches today at Beginningisnow.com.
To kick off the venture, she’s releasing limited-edition sweatshirts and graphic T-shirts (adorned with vintage photographs of Shields). She’ll next introduce an activewear line and sees herself offering other categories of apparel, along with beauty and wellness.
“There was some sort of sense of nostalgia,” she said of the T-shirts. “There was this reflection of where I came from and where I’m going….They really were just inspired by my past and giving a real nod to that and honoring that, because every single one of those moments in time led me right to here.”
While she’ll be rolling out product (currently manufactured in China and the U.S., with a distribution center in Los Angeles), “the content is really the crux of all of it,” she said. She plans to bring together experts across industries while sharing community stories, as well as her own.
“I’ve had so many beginnings in my life,” she went on. “And every single time, they’ve been terrifying. But I dove deep, and I found the strength to just begin a new chapter that I couldn’t even possibly know what was going to happen. So, the purpose really is to energize women and to inspire a community, no matter where you are in your life, to say, find that courage.
Find that strength to begin something new. Change something and pivot just a little bit and you’ll be surprised how capable you are and how big your life can be.”
The most important piece of advice she’s received as a woman that she’s shared with her two teenage daughters?
“Don’t let fear stop you,” she said. “Fear can be healthy. It can be a motivator. Don’t worry about what other people think about you or trying to conform to look like someone else or be someone else.
Really embrace your unique self and just go out there with open arms and an open heart. I spent so much of my life really trying to fit into and live up to perceptions from other people, from the public, from the industry. It takes a while to really cultivate your own sense of self….
It’s good to have goals. Just keep allowing yourself to reach for more, because you’ll be surprised what you’ll get. And if you don’t get whatever you thought, you will get something else.”
In the end, “there’s definite growth to be had.”
Read the original article on WWD