Anyone who has seen the inside of Brooke Shields's home—either on Instagram or in the pages of AD—knows the model is an avid art collector. Whether it be the Keith Haring heart above her fireplace or Will Cotton's portrayal of her daughters, Shields knows a good piece of work when she sees it. But the artwork she's owned the longest—which is still in her Greenwich Village townhouse to this day—is from a less well-known name: one of her roommates at Princeton. "I bought my roommate from college's painting of sunflowers. It's this beautiful painting of sunflowers, and my roommate was French and she painted, and that was the first thing I ever bought," Shields told AD at the New York Academy of Art's Take Home a Nude event at Sotheby's. The painting has traveled with her from her dormitory in New Jersey to her Manhattan townhouse, which she says is a collection of things that represent her true decor taste. "My first apartment was with my mom on 73rd street in the 70s, so it was a mishmash of different styles, some of which I've retained over the years, and some I never want to see again," she says with a laugh. "I think my real sense of aesthetic didn't come into play until I renovated a townhouse. It was on the cover of AD and it was probably the most nervous I've ever been in my life for a cover, just because it was completely my aesthetic that had been cultivated over years, decades, and it was the first time that had ever really come to fruition without it being my mother's taste or something I was supposed to have. It's very vulnerable," Shields explains.
