Not Madonna, Not Christie Brinkley: This Celeb Was The Face Of The '80s

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As the 1970s gave way to the 1980s, the worlds of fashion, glamour, and advertising rushed to keep up. The flashy disco look was already on the way out, and the focus turned to a more professional, yet still bombastic, aesthetic. Browns and beiges became the go-to colors, with a more conservative look replacing the more risqué styles of disco, punk, and the hippies of the 1970s. It was the decade of the yuppies, and the models of the time needed to match that aesthetic. Leading the charge — at least according to the magazine covers and ads, including a decade-defining one — was a very young Brooke Shields.

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Shields was born into the world of modelling, making her debut when she was just 11 months old when she appeared in an Ivory Soap ad, and never stopped. The Eileen Ford modelling agency created a department to represent children models just for Shields. She went on to spend the 1970s modelling and acting, appearing in the horror classic "Alice, Sweet Alice" and the controversial "Pretty Baby," where she plays an underaged sex worker.

Shields kicked off the 1980s by appearing in one of the most famous Calvin Kline ads of all time and starring in the sexually explicit teen romance "The Blue Lagoon." In 1981, Time put Shields on the cover and essentially made her the face of the decade under an article titled "The '80s Look." The cover focused on Shields' face, her distinctive eyebrows catching the reader's attention, and the bright red lipstick making her already pale face appear even paler. Her natural brown hair frames her face, and in the lower left corner is a hint of the brown Valentino sweater with a white frill around the neckline she is wearing. All of this happened before the star celebrated her sweet 16. 

When Brooke Shields appeared on the cover of Time, she was one of the most famous people in the world. Along with her face appearing in ads all over TV and magazines, 1980's "The Blue Lagoon" and 1981's "Endless Love" were both box office hits. Through it all, she was considered a controversial figure; many of the movies Shields acted in featured her nude, and she was often seen at Studio 54 when she was well under the age of consent. In 1983, she lost a legal fight over the publication of nude photos that were taken of her when she was 10. All of this led to Shields stepping away from fame and focusing on living her own life.

In 1983, Shields went off to college, attending Princeton University, where she studied French Literature. In '85, Shields wrote "On Your Own," a book focusing on helping teen girls with fashion, becoming independent, and balancing a social life with school. It also included plenty of stories from Shields' life. She graduated from Princeton in 1987, and soon found out that the entertainment industry had an image of her, and wasn't willing to break away from it, explaining on "Dinner's on Me," "This is a trifecta, you know what I mean? We've got looks, fame, intelligence, hopefully talent. And they were like, 'Oh, no, no, no. We wanted you kind of dumb.'"

In 1989, Shields returned to the big screen with the box office bomb "Brenda Starr." While her career as a model and actor would never again reach the highs of the early 1980s, Shields has found great success with her hair care company, Commence, and has been there for her daughters, Rowan and Grier.