You may know her best from her starring role as a San Francisco magazine writer in “Suddenly Susan” or one of her many films, but Brooke Shields is much more than her IMDb profile.
Over 15 years ago, she clapped back at a powerful Hollywood actor who belittled her experience recovering from postpartum depression. At the time, she wrote in a NYT op-ed that this "is my history, personal and real."
Before her acting career, Shields became the face of Ivory Soap when she was just 11 months old and continued modeling for many years, including for an infamous Calvin Klein ad campaign. Shields has generated controversy and intrigue throughout her career and has also authored several books, performed on Broadway and attended Princeton University while already famous. She also stars in a new movie that debuted on Netflix in November, A Castle for Christmas.
And thanks to prodding from her daughter, she joined TikTok in August where her first video has already been viewed over 13 million times. If anyone was primed to launch a brand, it’s Shields.
Now 56 years old, Shields is the CEO of her own wellness brand called Beginning is Now, which she launched in September, to create a supportive space for women over 40. So far the operation has been bootstrapped. On Thursday, Shields spoke about the New York-based project at an intimate event in San Francisco hosted and moderated by Sway Ventures partner Shelly Kapoor Collins.
“We’re not marketed to because they just can’t put us in a box. We cross socioeconomics. We’re single, we’re married, we’re divorced. We’re moms, we’re grandmas, we have kids. All of it,” Shields said. “We don’t fit into one category. It takes smarts to figure out but we are waiting to be addressed. We don’t want to be overlooked.”
Products like sweatshirts and beauty lines will be sold but, unlike other celebrity-founded wellness brands, selling stuff is not the point. Instead, Shields wants to build a community for women over 40 that’s accessible and addresses their varied needs. Brands (as well as Hollywood) typically hyper focus on younger generations, particularly Gen Z at the moment. She doesn’t just want to be the face of the brand, though, and is deeply involved in developing it.
The website is currently full of free fitness videos tailored to different abilities and interests from stretching and yoga to 10-minute-long strength sessions, and while paid memberships will eventually be implemented, the fitness content will always be free. A blog-like section features video conversations and stories on topics including grief, body-positivity and menopause. Other elements like book clubs and educational series could become part of the platform in the future but those details are still being worked out.
And the company's executive team includes COO Karla De Bernardo and Chief Creative Officer Narda Chan, both of whom have extensive retail and brand development experience working for companies such as Coach, Nine West, Macy's, Kate Spade, Armani, Anthropologie and Tommy Hilfiger.
Shields will be the first person to admit that she’s not an expert on every issue and is surrounding herself with other folks who have the know-how she's looking for.
Essentially, after more than five decades of growing up in the public eye, Shields wants to use the power of her celebrity as a catalyst to get information out that will help other women feel seen and supported as they age. It’s an attempt to combat the erasure of women’s experiences in media and marketing, and re-centering women over 40 as whole, vibrant people who have evolving experiences and needs as we age.
And nobody knows women like women. Which is why a key component of this venture is listening to their audience.
“Without the community there is no sale, and that’s why I didn’t want to start off by saying ‘here buy this’ when we didn’t really know what people were going to want and we didn’t know how they were going to respond,” Shield said. “Right now all of our movement content, all of our fitness content is free and we will stay there with that. Because we’re not trying to sell fitness and movement, we’re saying, look, these are things that you can do. That’s what we want to build. We’re going to have to work with the community to see what they want and what they want me to solve.”
It’s also an opportunity to create a new chapter and reinvent herself once again.
"I'd love to say it was some master plan but every time some area cooled to me, and in my industry you're rejected much more than you're accepted, and so every time I got rejected, instead of just waiting to hold my hand up and say 'pick me, pick me' which is the way you're taught to operate and is a really crummy feeling, I would go pick an area that would have me," Shields said, whether it was film or Broadway or TV. "It was almost like going where the water was warm so that I could not be dormant. Just because someone didn’t want me didn't mean I wasn't going to do what I do and be creative. I'm stubborn, I'm very resilient, I don't like losing, I don't like being told I can't do something."
