In person, Shields is filterless and funny, hamming up the same vein of self-parody that proved so winning in her more recent comic outings on TV, in Suddenly Susan and Lipstick Jungle. In the 1980 Calvin Klein ad, shot by Richard Avedon. We were just enjoying ourselves.” She gives a look that is at once dismissive and amused – a kind of what-can-I-do-if-I-still-set-the-fashion-world-ablaze shrug.

You know, what answers that question?” Besides, she says, “I thought, I’d never done underwear – it might be kind of a good message to be a 52-year-old being proud of everything, and being a mom, and working hard at staying in shape. “I said, ‘Well, thank you, but that sort of happened as a fluke.’” In the original Calvin Klein ad, the one that launched a thousand imitations and became the gold standard for controversy-courting ad campaigns, Shields had asked, “You want to know what comes between me and my Calvins? Nothing.” So the underwear shoot, she says, was “kind of an in-joke. Among the guests at the Lincoln Center lunch was Martha Stewart, who marched straight up to Shields and told her, “I can’t wait to see you in Calvin Klein underwear.” Attending the Calvin Klein show at New York fashion week in February this year, Shields was mobbed by people wanting selfies with her. When the American luxury publication Social Life magazine asked her to pose in white Calvin Klein underwear for a photoshoot this summer, the resulting cover image went viral, setting the fashion world abuzz with rumours that Shields was about to appear in a new campaign for the label she had made famous back in 1980. At 52, Shields is in great shape, her athletic 5ft 11in frame maintained with daily workouts and sessions of ashtanga yoga.

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