Life in the fashion fast lane is a farrago of pomp and perspiration, champagne and missed meals, glamour and 1 hour workdays. To interview Supermodel Brooke Shields for this week's cover story, TIME Show Business Correspondent Martha Smilgis tracked the high school sophomore through two weeks of stroboscopic contrasts, from a film festival in the Philippines to Rome, where Shields starred in Valentino's spring-summer showing. Along the way were elegant dinners of suckling pig and mango pudding with President Ferdinand Marcos at Malacanang Palace in Manila, a cruise with Mrs. Imelda Marcos on the presidential yacht, and a celebrity-studded evening at Valentino's Rome apartment. Smilgis, a former reporter at SPORTS ILLUSTRATED and writer at PEOPLE, has interviewed hundreds of celebrities from John Travolta to Sophia Loren, but she puts Shields among her most challenging assignments. Says Smilgis: "It is very difficult to interview a 15-year-old. Most people you interview don't have a mother helping them answer your questions." On the flight to Rome, Smilgis stole some time alone with Brooke as she did her algebra homework. Smilgis, who grew up in Hollywood and majored in political science at Berkeley, finds that the top models have a lot in common with star athletes. Says she: "Very few of them are narcissistic, and most treat their looks as prized tools, much the way a pitcher views pitching arm." Smilgis should know: she pitched the S.I. softball team to a 15-1 season in 1975.

Back in the U.S., TIME Correspondents James Wilde and Janice Simpson and Reporter-Researcher Georgia Harbison prowled the studios and salons of Manhattans fashion world. For his look at the way models live, Wilde went roller-discoing with Supermodel Apollonia, brunched with British Model Rachel Ward at the Plaza Hotel's Palm Court and interviewed Louise Roberts, who every week combs through as many as 200 applicants to the Eileen Ford agency to come up with one or two who might have a modeling future. "Normally I work the streets," Wilde says. "This job was like being let loose in Cartier to fondle its rarest gems-- with one's eyes, of course."

Harbison interviewed agency executives and bookers to learn how the business has changed. Says she: "There is a lot more money involved now, and that means a lot more pressure. Eileen Ford summed up the difference in her models in three words: 'They can count,' "Says Simpson: "I always thought that all a model had to do to look beautiful was put on pretty clothes and stand in front of a camera. But after this behind-the-lens view of the business, I know that something far more important is involved--very hard work."

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