When Shelley Hack was 17, someone spotted her at a debutante ball and urged her to try modeling. "This guy kept bothering me," Shelley said, "The man was a guy named Huntington Hartford, who had a magazine (Show)." Shelley added, "He told my father that I was a new face." On September 1964, 17-year-old Shelley graced the pages of Show magazine in a spread entitled, "Shelley Hack: A Show First." (For more, check out: The First Youthful Sophistication Youthful Sophistication 2 Youthful Sophistication 3 Youthful Sophistication 4) The pictures were so successful that she was asked to go to New York where she met Ford Models matriarch Eileen Ford, an acquaintance of her mother Pat (a former model herself). "She barely looked at me," Shelley said, as her mother and Mrs. Ford conversed. But at the end of the meeting, Mrs. Ford turned to her and said, "We'll be expecting you at 9 o’clock tomorrow." Shelley (who was still in school then) said, "Modeling was a great summer job. It beat waitressing."
After graduating, Shelley signed on full-time with Ford Models Inc. "I was brought up not to close doors," Shelley said. And she took advantage of the great opportunities modeling had to offer. She was able to travel around the world and work with the best and most respected people in the fashion industry. She saw herself as a product and thought it through. She deduced, "I looked at the business and identified the markets. I knew the key was that they always wanted someone new. I decided to hit one market one year, then cut my hair and hit another." By 1976, she was hand-picked to represent the Revlon Charlie brand and the rest is history. She had reached the pinnacle of her profession and had become one of the highest-paid Supermodels of the era.
