Welcome to Shelf Life, where celebrities break down every last detail of their beauty routines from the highest hair on their heads to the tips of their toes. Today, model and actor Brooke Shields reveals the multi-use makeup stick she swears by, her struggles with nail growth, and her secret weapon against breakouts.
Brooke Shields and beauty have a very weird relationship. They’re kind of like ex-spouses who are hesitantly learning to be friends again years after a tumultuous divorce. If you’ve followed her decades-long modeling and acting career — which began before she was even a year old — or watched her 2023 docuseries, Pretty Baby, I don’t really need to explain it to you.
As Shields puts it, “Beauty… it’s always been a job.” And it’s a job that’s placed her in uncomfortably bright spotlights and under microscopes for public consumption and scrutiny throughout her entire life. Because of this, she’s tried not to dedicate much of her off-duty time to beauty, but watching her two daughters become interested in it is starting to change things.
“It’s now become more enjoyable to me from living through it with girls, young women — their appreciation of it and their techniques. I’m starting to enjoy it through them,” she tells Allure. “As I’ve gotten older, I’m starting to enjoy skin care and makeup more because it’s a form of self-care, and the ritual of it is calming. It’s nice to come back into it at this stage of life.”
Basically, Shields is in her reclamation era, catalyzed in part by her partnership with True Botanicals, which began in 2021. “It’s nice because it’s on my terms,” she says. “I’m not following the fad.” As part of that partnership, Shields broke down her entire beauty routine for us, including her hyper-hydrating skin-care habits, the manicure and pedicure she can’t go without, and her favorite pared-down makeup products.
Hair
Hairstylists never want me to show up [to shoots] with really clean hair because it’s valuable for them. They always end up dirtying it up as much as they can with root spray or something so that my hair doesn’t go flat. So I try to keep it trim, to keep it healthy, but not wash it so often.
[When I’m not working,] I try to keep it moisturized and not brush it too much so that the natural waves in my hair won’t fuzz out. I like to leave it wet. If I need to style it, I’ll use hot rollers.